


Dangerous Blues

by SchrodingersShanu



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cafe Owner Minhyuk, Emails and Podcasts, Getting Together, Influencer Hyungwon, M/M, Moving On, Past Character Death, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 37,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22558414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SchrodingersShanu/pseuds/SchrodingersShanu
Summary: A year later after his boyfriend Hoseok's death, Minhyuk's life has become stagnant when he receives already scheduled emails for him written by Hoseok, sending Minhyuk to places from their past. As Minhyuk learns Hoseok's story, he also learns about himself and Hyungwon, Hoseok's best friend who keeps bumping into him after a year of absence.Past Wonhyuk. Eventual Hyunghyuk.TW: Depression, references to suicidal thoughts.
Relationships: Chae Hyungwon/Lee Minhyuk, Lee Hoseok | Wonho/Lee Minhyuk
Comments: 38
Kudos: 60





	1. Coke Bottles and Rail Museums

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I already have two WIPs but I got in a slump and my fingers slipped. 
> 
> TW: Depression, reference to suicide, suicidal thoughts (not in this chapter).
> 
> Full disclosure, please take care of yourself and mind the trigger warnings. If you still want to read it reach out to me and I'll let you know the paras you should avoid reading. PLEASE PLEASE take care of yourselves.

Minhyuk was sixteen when he met Hoseok for the first time. While their meeting was far from a meet-cute, it's memorable enough to still haunt him now and then when he thinks of Hoseok.

On the nights when Minhyuk feels too small to be of any significance, he clenches his eyes shut and thinks about Hoseok. It stops him from wanting to slip through the cracks of this colossal universe.

When he is curled into himself at night and there's no Hoseok spooning him from behind as his scattered thoughts clash and merge to suffocate him, he thinks of himself as an inconsequential twinkling star seen from afar which would be missed by no one if its light is extinguished.

He imagines himself standing on the edge of a cliff, just one step away from freeing himself of this emotional pain that has latched onto his body like a deadly vine, pierced his skin with its sharp thorns and sucked out his spirit until all that is left of him is a sentient skeleton with no desires, no growth, no will, just pain.

Emotional pain.

Physical pain.

_Just pain._

Minhyuk inhales deeply and lets his thoughts out in a slow exhale. _It should be around 2 AM._ He closes his eyes and thinks of his first memory of Hoseok.

Minhyuk was standing at the corner of their school cafeteria, eating a burger while waiting for Jooheon to come with his own food when someone had collided with him and in an impressive projectile, his burger had flown out of his hand.

He had turned to give the culprit a piece of his mind when he saw Hoseok for the first time. He was a scrawny little guy back then, his skinny body appearing even smaller as his shoulders had hunched with guilt written all over his face.

Minhyuk had felt a little pity but then his gaze had flitted to the carcass of his burger - gutted and now lying on the floor in pieces - brutally murdered by a careless idiot and just like his dead burger, his pity had flown away.

“Do you have buttons for eyes?” Minhyuk had sneered.

“I am so sorry! My friend just pushed me.” Hoseok had said while biting his lip in worry as his eyes had roamed here and there trying to find his alleged friend.

“Well, I am sure your imaginary friend pushed you with his imaginary thoughts,” Minhyuk had begun sarcastically as Hoseok winced, “Are you one of those stupid seniors who harass juniors over some stupid bets? Is this one of your stupid dares?”

“What? No!”

“Oh, so you are a punk junior who just likes messing with his seniors to show off to his friends?”

“No! I am a senior but not like the seniors you are talking about.”

Minhyuk had opened his mouth to say what he thought of every useless senior in their school but before he could pick a few choice words, Hoseok had abruptly knelt on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Hoseok had picked up the pieces of his dead burger and collected them in his hands, cradling it like a broken doll. “I don’t want to litter.”

Minhyuk’s brows had lifted in surprise. “Oh, so you do have some kind of integrity? Is it only limited to inanimate objects?”

Hoseok had given him a long-suffering sigh, and Minhyuk had gotten about ready to scare him with a fake punch.

“I’ll buy you whatever you want to eat.”

Minhyuk had tapped his chin as he thought about it for a second. “That’s cool with me.”

Hoseok’s lips had started twitching in amusement. “Is that all it takes to get your favor? Offer you free food?”

Now that Hoseok had proven himself to be a man of principle, Minhyuk let his stray thoughts of how handsome he was come to the forefront of his mind.

“Most of the time, yeah. A pretty face to go with free food does help, not gonna lie.”

Hoseok’s cheeks had flushed a beautiful pink and his plump lips had spread to reveal a heart-shaped smile, the corner of his lips curling inwards like fragile petals.

Minhyuk remembers being completely mesmerized by it and saving it as his first memory of making Hoseok smile.

_Caught from the first smile._

He never even had a chance, did he?

Minhyuk opens his eyes and stares into the darkness, willing away that memory. A beat passes and he closes his eyes betraying his promise to himself and indulges himself in every memory of Hoseok smiling at him, with him.

Soon his body takes over and carries him to dreamland. Minhyuk lets himself float to a place where he sometimes gets to meet Hoseok, kiss Hoseok, hold Hoseok.

_Hoseok._

_Hoseok._

_Hoseo-_

***

The room is dark when Minhyuk wakes up. It’s been eleven months since Minhyuk lost the desire to wake up to the light and taped his curtains to the wall.

As he tosses and turns, caught between sleep and awareness, there is a mess of non-verbal thoughts in his head. Even as he tries to chase the last remnants of his dream, it evaporates and all Minhyuk can feel is a vague feeling of melancholy with snatches of mellow colors flashing inside his mind.

He comes to the sound of rain patting against his house.

Taking a turn, trapping himself in his covers, he tries to shake his melancholy away but it leaves him drenched like raindrops sliding from leaves.

Still bleary-eyed, he moves his hand somewhere near his soft pillow until it hits his glasses. He puts them on and resumes the hunt for his phone, eyes still closed.

He switches it on and slowly opens his eyes but the bright light of his phone forces him to close them. He slowly blinks his eyes open again and then rubs them.

_“You should stop doing that, you know. It’s a bad habit.”_

_“Yeah? Well, you are a bad habit and I keep doing you.”_

_“Sunshine, you wish th-”_

Minhyuk blinks his eyes again and takes a deep breath.

_Flowers._

_Puppies._

_Kittens._

_Rainbows._

_Jooheon’s Dimples._

_Changkyun’s fangs._

_Hyunwoo’s eye smile._

The screen turns off and he presses the button again, his eyes ready to take the damage.

_7:15 AM_

_Sunday, 1-_

Minhyuk takes a deep breath again, practicing his own form of dissociation.

_1 March_

_It's been a year._

_Happy birthday, Hoseok._

Minhyuk gets up from his bed, his feet landing on the soft carpet. As he slides his feet through the soft faux-fur, he decides that today is going to be different.

He is not going to think about what happened a year ago instead he is going to think about the dishes in the sink that have been piling up for two days now.

He stretches his arms over his head and his back cracks with a soft crunch. There's a throbbing pain in his left knee so he gets out of the room and wades towards the fridge to pour himself a glass of juice, and then pops a painkiller.

Standing in front of the sink, the precariously balanced dishes confront him and he sighs.

He takes his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through it for a podcast. Upon finding no new episodes from his favorites, he settles for an older episode. He puts his earphones in and arms himself with the sponge, finally starting on the dishes.

The smooth voices of the hosts become a background noise as Minhyuk goes and comes out of his thoughts.

_I need to give Jooheon some days off. He has been looking more tired day by day and if I don't threaten to fire him, he'll keep working himself to the bone. Hoseok always did sa-_

Minhyuk shakes his head and tunes back to the podcast. Hyungwon and Kihyun's voice flows in his ears again as he moves the sponge in a circular motion on the plate.

"I dunno. A girl cheated on me once and it was alright. The world didn’t end suddenly. I wish she were more honest with me but, like, yeah, whatever. We decided we weren't a good match and that was that."

That's Hyungwon. Always so passive.

"WHAT? No! Relationships are so intimate and when someone you trusted with yourself just cheats on you, it changes you for the worst. I won't ever wish cheating on anyone!"

Kihyun, always the emotional and wise one.

"It's not that deep for me. I just think if that person cheats on you then you weren't just meant to be. Now I am not saying that it’s not bad, but I am just saying that it's not the worst thing in the world. There’s always this villainization of people who cheat and I don’t think in those terms, I just think sometimes people make bad decisions and that doesn’t make them a bad person."

"Here we go again! I am all good with not putting people in boxes based on one thing and there are certainly cases where cheating can be justified like your partner abusing you but in general, I think people who cheat have something wrong with them. It’s okay to fall out of love but it’s not okay to string your partner along. Just say the truth."

"I do like honesty in a relationship but things aren’t as black and white. I think we should try to understand people more. There are people who cheat on their partners just because they are shitheads but I also think there are people who cheat on their partner because they fell out of love but felt too guilty to be honest with their partner and themselves. Okay, here’s my question for you, what if their partner is someone manipulative who they know will threaten to kill themselves if they ever said that they like someone else? Is cheating justified then?”

“No one buys the ‘I will kill myself if you loved someone else’ these days. What kind of bad fiction are you spinning? People just kill themselves because their life is shitty and everyone is depre-”

Minhyuk takes out the earphones from his phone’s jack, and his earphones just dangle from his ears unconnected as he continues to do the dishes.

It’s 11:30 when he texts Hyunwoo if everything’s alright in the cafe and gets a text back that tells him to “just enjoy your day off”.

_Easier said than done._

Minhyuk looks at his laptop and finds no motivation to start watching a new series, something that he used to do like a hound. He glances around, and his eyes fall on the stack of books on the shelf but he feels too distracted to read anything and absorb it.

He turns his phone back on and starts going down another rabbit hole on Youtube when an email pops up on his notification bar, he absent-mindedly taps on it.

**From: Lee Hoseok**

Pain works in mysterious ways, Minhyuk realizes that as his eyes prickle instantly with tears. Just the name feels enough to remind him of the feeling that he represses down every day as he wakes up alone in his bed, as he goes to the cafe without anyone kissing his cheek as a goodbye, as he comes back home with no one to have dinner with, as he goes back to sleep without anyone whispering silly little made-up songs in his ears.

Even as he wipes his tears and decides to read the email, he knows that he is not ready for whatever Hoseok has prepared for him but he also knows that even if it's another millennium, he’ll never be ready for Hoseok.

**"Hey love,**

**How are you doing? Did you have a proper breakfast or did you just eat cold bread with butter again?**

Minhyuk face scrunches as a hundred tears leak out from his eyes.

**"I really hope you didn't. At least, order something if you don't feel like cooking. We can't have our sunshine keeling over now, can we? Changkyun will eat me if that happened.**

**It's been a year, baby."**

An ugly sob tears out of Minhyuk’s throat. He puts his palm over his mouth because the sound of his own pain scares him.

**"I turned 25! How are you doing? I hope I haven't snatched your smiles away if I have then God will never forgive me for clouding his sun, and I am probably looking up at you from hell."**

The tears keep streaming even as Minhyuk wipes them off to read better.

**"It's not that bad. We have all the great rockstars here but heaven does have the virgins, so it's quite the trade-off as you can imagine."**

Minhyuk laughs suddenly, the sound hysterical and forced out of him.

**"I also hope that you aren't mad at me for dying and still not leaving your side. I scheduled some emails for the next two months so I can be with you till our anniversary."**

Minhyuk clutches his phone.

Some more pieces of Hoseok to read, to absorb, to seal into his soul until he can feel no pain but just Hoseok. Some more pieces of Hoseok.... until there’s no Hoseok to look forward to.

**"I wonder what has happened in a year? How have you changed? Did you get that Whale tattoo? I bet it looks beautiful. Of course, it does. Click a pic and put your phone downwards so that I can see it, will ya?**

**Did you get to complete your collection? Did you paint a hundred whales and named one of them after me?"**

An image of his easel collecting dust for a year now flashes through Minhyuk’s mind.

**"There are so many things that I want to ask you but the other questions can wait, for now, I want to tell you why I am sending you these.**

**There are things about me that you don’t know: some good and some bad. I could never muster the courage to say them when I was alive but now I want you to know them. To know the person that you loved so dearly.**

**Today, I am going to tell you about the first time that I saw you. Do you remember our first meeting in the school cafeteria?"**

Of course, he does. How can he not when sometimes it feels like his life started at that moment, and there was nothing of him before that.

**“I didn’t tell you then because you were too busy stuffing food in your mouth but I knew about you even before that.**

**It was during the school trip to the museums. A few months ago before I "killed" your burger.**

**Hyungwon came up to me and told me that a junior had drunk a whole bottle of coke on the bus because he had lost its cap and was now running around in the museum looking for a restroom.**

**He said it like it was the best thing that he had seen in the whole museum and then dragged me to witness it for myself.”**

Minhyuk scoffs remembering how Hyungwon used to be, probably still is. A natural dickhead.

**“So, there I was, just a guy looking at another guy who was trying to keep it together in front of the new pretty teacher while shaking his legs badly, ready to pee his pants at any second.**

**Before I could help you, you just ran away, leaving the teacher all confused. But, yeah, that was the first time I saw you. Even at that time, I remember thinking that you were really cute.**

**What can I say? A guy about to piss his pants really does it for me as nothing else does.**

**So, when I saw you in the cafeteria, I really wanted to eat my lunch with you but I panicked and came up with this brilliant idea of just pushing myself onto you. Can you believe it actually worked? So, yeah, there was no “friend” who pushed me but I did give myself a metaphorical push to go through that and I am my own friend so it wasn’t technically a lie.”**

Minhyuk sniffles even as his lips stretch into a smile. _Always so charming, Hoseok._ The smile drops. _Always a liar, Hoseok._

**“Phew, that’s one thing off my chest. Anyway, now it’s my turn. Today is Sunday, and knowing everyone they probably forced you into staying at home for today. They are good friends, right? How are they doing? Are they helping my sunshine out?”**

Minhyuk blinks to keep his tears at bay. Why do you care about me and my friends? He thinks, his heart full of hurt and resentment now.

**“I know you are probably angry at me, as you have the right to be. I did leave you without an explanation only to come back a year later with these ramblings.**

**Even then allow me to be with you for two more months - for this one last time - and I promise to give you all the answers that your heart desires. Just give me these two months and retrieve some pieces of me. Of us.**

**I know I am being selfish but I am dead so I think I am allowed to be. Will you go, baby?”**

Minhyuk nods to no one, still so hungry for everything that Hoseok offers, even after telling himself otherwise for a year.

A tear falls down on his phone screen and he doesn’t bother to wipe it off.

**“If I know you, then you are probably convinced to give me a shot.”**

Minhyuk cracks a bitter smile.

_That’s me. Always so transparent._

_Then there’s you._

_Did I even know you at all, Hoseok?_

**“So today, I want you to go to the rail museum. I know that it’s boring, but I think that’s where our story began so let’s start from there. Buy a coke, go there and ride the mini train. I wanted to do it with you but…**

**This time, do it for me, yeah?**

**Meet me in front of the mini-train at 4 PM.**

**After that, let’s talk next week.**

**I love you so much.**

**I am so sorry.**

**_Love,_ **

**_Hoseok”_ **

_“I love you so much.”_

_“I am so sorry.”_

_Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar_  
_liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar li-_

Minhyuk heaves a heavy breath and throws his phone away.

***

The slight wind ruffles Minhyuk’s hair and his bangs blind him for the umpteenth time. A sigh leaves his lips as he looks at the mini train leaving the station.

He doesn’t look around to look for a familiar face even if Hoseok had said to “meet me in front of the mini-train at 4 PM”.

Hoseok lied to him when he was alive so why would now be any different when he is dead?

His fingers twitch for a cigarette to deal with the crushing disappointment that he feels because even though he knew Hoseok was dead - he would know, he was the one who organized the funeral - and wasn’t coming alive to ride a mini-train with Minhyuk, that still doesn't make bearing Hoseok’s constant absence - which weighed especially heavy today - any easier.

A line of mostly kids starts building behind Minhyuk as he waits to fulfill his dead boyfriend’s wish.

“Planning to steal some children, are we?” a familiar smooth voice whispers in his ears and Minhyuk startles. He whips his head back and sees the face of another person he hasn’t seen in almost a year.

“Hyungwon?” the names leaves his lips by itself as his eyes take in the now pink-haired Hyungwon in a black shirt and black pants.

“You look like you came here to attend a funeral.”

Hyungwon raises a brow and gives a mocking laugh. “No ‘Hi, I missed you, Hyungwonnie.’ ‘Hi, I am a piece of shit for not returning your calls, Hyungwonnie.’? To think that everyone thinks of you as the best thing to happen since sliced bread astounds me.”

Minhyuk narrows his eyes. “You could always drop by my place, ‘Hyungwonnie’.” Minhyuk’s voice is sarcastic even as he turns his face away to hide his guilt.

Hyungwon takes a step forward to stand beside him. A distance of one foot and countless hurt feelings between them.

“Well, you made it pretty clear by not answering my calls about what you thought of my company, so I decided to give you some space.”

Minhyuk looks at him in incredulity. “For a year?”

“Well, time is an artificial construct-”

Minhyuk scoffs. “Leave your podcast whataboutery at the podcast. You didn’t contact me for almost a year just because I didn’t return your few messages and calls and then you changed your number so tell me again ‘Hyungwonnie’, how does it feel to live your life as a steaming pile of shit?”

Hyungwon gives him an amused smile and God, Minhyuk just wants to punch it away, but decides on settling for clenching his fists instead.

Hyungwon does do live shows and modeling jobs as well so he’ll probably need that pretty face of his.

“I didn’t think you cared that much.”

Minhyuk exhales and closes his eyes. “I don’t.”

When he opens his eyes, he catches Hyungwon looking at him with a soft smile on his face, his eyes straying away as soon as they meet with Minhyuk’s.

Hyungwon clears his throat before turning ahead. “My phone got stolen. You could have asked for my new number from Kihyun if you really wanted it.”

Minhyuk follows his gaze. “I didn’t want it that much.”

“Always so honest, aren’t you, Minhyuk?”

A hundred answers rush through his mind but Minhyuk decides to go with the most immediate, most honest one.

“Well, not everyone is like your best friend. Some of us try to be honest.”

Hyungwon whips his head and looks at him sharply. “Be careful, Minhyuk. You don’t know Hoseok’s story so be careful of your version of him. Thinking of him as a liar is only going to hurt you.”

Startled by the anger in Hyungwon’s voice, Minhyuk swallows his snark and just nods back.

The mini-train comes in sight as Hyungwon sighs. A strong wind passes them and Minhyuk looks at Hyungwon’s hair swirl like cotton candy until his bangs cover his eyes again and he can’t see anymore.

Before he can do anything, thin spindly fingers brush his forehead as Hyungwon puts his hair back.

“Thanks.”

Hyungwon gives him a soft smile. “I won’t say ‘no problem at all’ since you like honesty, and in all honesty, it was very much a problem because I had to touch you without any gloves.”

Minhyuk rolls his eyes and hits his arm.

Hyungwon blinks his eyes at him in an exaggerated manner and offers him his hand. “You can always thank me by going with me on this ride.”

Minhyuk eyes his hands and smirks. “Is it okay to hold your hand? I am not wearing any gloves, after all.”

Hyungwon smirks back and unrolls his sleeve until it’s half-covering his hand. “I am good.”

Minhyuk rolls his eyes but indulges as he puts his hand in Hyungwon's.

“Shall we?” Hyungwon asks as he holds Minhyuk’s hand in a loose grip.

“Yeah,” Minhyuk says and they step into the carriage.

The tour takes them around the museum and they stare at nothing, their bodies pressed against each other out of necessity due to the small seats.

Minhyuk closes his eyes and lets the moving motion of the train take him far away to a place where there are no dead boyfriends sending you to places from your long-forgotten past.

To a place where there are no dead boyfriend’s best-friends who kissed you at their best-friend’s funeral and then vanished from your life for almost a year, leaving you confused and so very hurt and then bumped into you out of nowhere, holding your hand as your body jerks back and forth with the train’s motion.

To a place where his cafe isn’t closing in two months because of the crippling economy, to a place where his best-friend's eyes don’t have the same exhaustion and desperation as his boyfriend's did and Minhyuk never caught on to it until it was too late, to a place where his knee doesn’t hurt every day and he isn’t addicted to painkillers.

To a place where he doesn’t want to follow into Hoseok’s footsteps.

To a place where there is no pain and Hoseok is waiting for him.

“Hey, we need to get off.” Minhyuk opens his eyes, his knee throbs as he gets up suddenly. He swallows it down as Hyungwon gently pulls him out of the train and towards the platform.

***

They are walking towards the subway station, an ice-cream cone in their hands when Minhyuk finally asks Hyungwon what was he doing here.

“We are doing a segment in our podcast next week where we are going to discuss our school crushes and considering I had time today and I just felt like it, I thought why not go to the place where I first saw my crush?”

Minhyuk bites into the last part of his cone, the crunch mingling with the chocolate inside it. “Who was your crush?”

“Guess,” Hyungwon says as his hands come for Minhyuk’s last bite and Minhyuk swats it away before shoving the whole part in his mouth. Hyungwon pouts at him.

“Me?” Minhyuk says just for the sake of saying something.

Hyungwon scoffs. “No, you dumbass. It was our Chemistry teacher.”

Minhyuk rolls his eyes. “You are gross. I don’t even know what every guy saw in her.”

Hyungwon lifts his left hand in front of his chest and does a universal gesture of “big boobs” and Minhyuk swings his arm with full force to hit him on his chest. Hyungwon catches it and laughs. “What? She had a big heart!”

As much of a dickhead Hyungwon was - is - his laugh has always been so pure and contagious that it made - makes - Minhyuk laugh as well. So he laughs with him until Hyungwon abruptly stops and holds his face in his hands and gently rubs the apple of his cheeks with his thumbs. It's then that Minhyuk realizes that somewhere during his laughter, he started crying.

“Oh, Minhyuk. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Hyungwon pulls him into a tight hug and Minhyuk clenches his eyes shut, forcing his tears to stop.

_This is so embarrassing._

A few people pass them by, their eyes surreptitiously glancing at them. Minhyuk clutches Hyungwon’s shirt.

"It’s been a year and it’s not okay. I don’t think it will ever be okay, Hyungwon.”

Hyungwon doesn’t say anything as he rubs his back because these days Minhyuk prefers honesty.

Hyungwon puts a hand around his waist as he pulls back. His other hand starts wiping his tears while he looks at Minhyuk with this...tenderness in his eyes as if Minhyuk’s pain is hurting him.

“There will be a day when you’ll wake up and you’ll remember Hoseok fondly instead of sadly. It will come, you can trust me on this.” Hyungwon’s deep voice whispers careful promises and Minhyuk nods, going along with it for now.

***

At night, he drafts his own response and then rereads Hoseok's email for the umpteenth time, eyes still watery but the hurt a little less as there’s no unpredictability now. He rereads the rail museum part of it again when his phone pings with a text from an unknown number.

**Well, here’s my number. Try to respond to me this time.**

Minhyuk smiles and saves the number. As he moves his fingers to reply, he gets another text.

There’s a photo attached that shows Minhyuk sitting in the mini-train, his eyes closed. Minhyuk’s heart twists as he sees the solemn expression on his face.

His phone pings with another text.

**Re: Previous Photo: Today, I went to a dumbass zoo and saw a dumbass.**

A giggle slips out of Minhyuk's lips.

 **You are the dumbass here. Good night** , Minhyuk texts back.

**No, you. Good night, dumbass.**

Minhyuk shakes his head and locks his screen as he gets ready to sleep, feeling a little less lonely for the first time in a year.

***

**Hey Hoseok,**

**How am I doing? Like everything in my life after your death, the answer is a bit complicated.**

**Some days are fine and some days are not. Sometimes I go a week without thinking about you and sometimes I curl up and cry every day for weeks because everything feels so empty without you.**

**It's been a year.**

**You don't have to tell me when I have counted each day since your absence.**

**When each day has felt like a year without you.**

**You don't have to tell me.**

**I didn't have cold bread today but I had some juice. I am running a little low on money, so I don't really want to order something. I had some noodles for dinner.**

**Remember the times when we used to sit on the balcony eating instant noodles right after it rained?**

**I remember you dragging me into your lap on that ugly green bean bag and us sharing earphones, just sitting there in silence, you with your face buried in my neck and me playing with your hands.**

**Today it was raining in the morning and for the first time in a while, I didn't think of us sitting on the balcony.**

**I am not sure if it's progress or not because on the one end, I don't want the empty feeling that I have after every time I think of you but on the other hand, I don't want to forget you.**

**What is a Minhyuk without a Hoseok?**

**I am too afraid of the answer.**

**Happy birthday. If I had known that we'd be celebrating your last birthday, I would have never let you go.**

**Do you know that I think about it every day?**

**That if I had just not let you go, what would have happened?**

**Do you know that I had started saving up to buy you that piano that you always wanted?**

**I wanted to give it to you on your 25th birthday. Did you know that?**

**You didn't know anything, Hoseok, did you?**

**Well, as it turns out, neither did I for that matter.**

**Years of relationship, but did we know each other at all?**

**I am not the sun. You were.**

**You were my sun.**

**And without you, days seem dark and pointless. But, what do you care?**

**If I were a stronger man, I would have deleted your emails without reading and kept on moving with my life. Or better yet if I were a stronger man, I would have read your emails and wouldn't have felt as much hope as I did.**

**Letting myself hope because of a dead man's email. I am pathetic, aren't I?**

**A lot has happened in a year. I am closing the cafe in two months because the business is in loss. I am scared for Jooheon but I don't know how to sit him down and talk to him. Changkyun has really stepped it up in taking care of us. Hyunwoo wants me to go on a trip with him but I keep postponing it. He is still as patient with me as ever. I have stopped painting. I tried but the colours don't feel right when there's no one to help me buy colors and settle on a palette.**

**It’s not until someone is gone from your life do you realize how big a part they played in your everything.**

**You were there in my paintings, in my movie nights, in my grocery shopping trips, in my house, on my bedsheets, in my clothes, in my unspoken fantasies, in my heart, in my soul.**

**Now you are everywhere but nowhere.**

**Tell me Hoseok, it's been a year and I still don't know how to deal with this. How to forget someone who is everywhere? How to forget someone that you never want to forget?**

**I am addicted to your memories and I have given up on growing.**

**I didn't get the whale tattoo. I wanted you to sketch it.**

**Why do you want me to name a whale after you? Isn't possessing my whole being enough for you? Even in your death you are so selfish.**

**I always knew that no one pushed you but since that push got me you, I never called you out on it.**

**There were so many things that I suspected but I never confronted you because - I don't know - I just felt that you didn't want me to know them or you wanted to deal with them on your own?**

**There were so many things that I never said because I didn't want to make things awkward between us. I wanted our relationship to be perfect and it wasn't until months after your death when I was torturing myself over what I did wrong that I realized that somewhere along our time together, I started prioritizing our relationship over you.**

**Was it the same for you?**

**Is that why you didn't tell me about this sickness that had its grip over you?**

**We were always together.**

**Even when we weren't together, we were together. How did I miss such a huge part of you?**

**Were you that good a liar or was I just that blind?**

**I went to the museum, still as boring as ever.**

**You lied again and didn't meet me there but keeping the dead accountable for such promises is a little unreasonable, I admit.**

**I bumped into your best friend there. My life must be some kind of macabre comedy because he was wearing the same clothes as he was at your funeral. He has pink hair now. It suits him. He is still as annoying as ever though. We rode the train together and then ate ice cream. He offered to drop me in his car but I declined because I didn't want to tell him that I moved. I didn't want him to see this small decrepit apartment that I live in now and pity me or try to help me.**

**I let myself rely on you and look where that got me.**

**Talking to him was nice though and I wouldn't mind if we bump into each other again.**

**Thinking about your story, I don't know how I forgot this but I had seen Hyungwon before you introduced him to me.**

**It was during that same school trip.**

**After we came back from the rail museum and were standing outside the bus in a line, I saw him putting something on my seat from the windows. I couldn't see him clearly but now it makes sense.**

**It was a coke bottle.**

**(Did you tell him to do that?)**

**I hate you so much.**

**I miss you so much.**

**Yours,**

**Minhyuk**


	2. Terraces and Camellias - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past, present, and the second email.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Implicit Depression, suicidal thoughts
> 
> Again, please, please take care of yourselves.

A hand on his flushed cheek, Minhyuk sits down opposite Hoseok, legs crossed, ankle scraping against the rough concrete of the ground.

The empty bottle between them spins.

Beside him, Kihyun bumps his shoulder. "You alright? Your whole face is red."

Minhyuk puts his hand down and clears his throat. "Yeah."

When he looks up, Hoseok catches his eyes and points at his own ear, eyebrow raised in question.

Minhyuk touches the flower tucked behind his ear and shrugs, smiling as Hoseok shakes his head, so easily amused by Minhyuk's antics.

The bottle spins again and this time pins Minhyuk with its whimsies.

"Truth or dare, junior?" Mark asks.

Minhyuk shrugs. "Dare, of course."

The circle bursts into a smattering of 'oohs' around him but all Minhyuk hears is Hoseok's sweet laughter.

How can someone be so sweet, Minhyuk thinks, zoning out at such a delicate time while his enemies start plotting his downfall in careful whispers punctuated by villainous cackling.

If Minhyuk wasn't floating in his head, he would have read the room and ran far, far away.

But he doesn't because he is too engaged in solving the curious case of Hoseok's bulging cheeks and soft lips, glittering like nothing has the right to during the night.

Minhyuk sighs internally. How is it possible for a human person to be the personification of sweetness? How is Hoseok's laugh, words, voice, soul, heart, mind, everything so sweet?

_Does he also taste sweet?_

"Kiss Hoseok!” Drunk off his ass, Kihyun shouts while slinging his arm around Minhyuk.

The abruptness of the words sting Minhyuk like an electric current and he can't help the subtle flinch of surprise.

A year of moving in circles - staring, smiling, looking away - and now this villainous circle of drunk fiends have cut a hole in his skull and laid out his deepest, darkest wish for everyone to see.

Kiss Hoseok, Kihyun says, audacious, unlike Minhyuk. His shouting, only a little louder than his own mind’s for the last three months.

_Staring, smiling, maybe kissing?_

The circle around him starts chanting the cursed words amidst raucous peals of laughter.

They are his Satan and Minhyuk refuses to be their Eve.

_Kiss Hoseok? Pfft? Who me? Me?_

_I am an innocent matter, made of even more innocent atoms, which are then made of even more innocent neutrons, protons, and electrons._

_I have no desire to kiss or climb Hoseok like a tree. Climb? What? Who said that? Not Minhyuk. Nope._

Yesterday, Minhyuk was a boy.

Today, before the party, when he changed his hairstyle for the fifth time to impress absolutely _no one_ , Minhyuk was a boy with a secret.

Now, as he is sitting here in the hopes of _nothing_ , Minhyuk is a boy whose secret has been siphoned from his brain mush and is currently being chanted around him loudly, complete with raised arms and hooting.

_What’s next, Kihyun? Yanking me out of a warm bath and ordering me to parade naked through snowy streets? Why don’t you just do that? Huh? Fuckhead._

"What?"

Eloquent. Precise. Cowardly. This is Minhyuk’s brand now.

Jackson grins mischievously, and _oh no_.

_Devious, incorrigible, everything wrong with the world, you!_

"Kiss him. That's your dare. Unless you’re too chicken?"

Before the ugliest noise – that is teenage boys clucking and flapping their arms while stripping their target of its humanity to fit their chicken propaganda – can begin, Minhyuk speaks up. "I can't kiss him like that."

_Fuck it. It’s now or never._

Mark puts hands around his mouth and howls.

Jostling him, Kihyun asks. "How can you kiss him then?"

Minhyuk looks at Hoseok and finds him staring back at him.

_Staring. Smiling. Looking away._

Except…

Hoseok never looks away, and for the first time since they met, neither does Minhyuk. They stare at each other. Anticipating, daring.

Okay, Minhyuk is going to do it. This is it. He is going to do it.

Or maybe not, Minhyuk thinks, as Hoseok starts grinning.

Minhyuk's gaze flits away, feeling incredibly shy. The warmth of his cheeks and the red of his ears announcing his greed as confirmed by the not-so-innocent way Hoseok is grinning at him.

Hoseok gives a little laugh, and looks around, always facilitating his cop out. "Stop teasing him."

He's the enabler. Minhyuk is innocent.

"Thank you. But I can speak for myself."

Hoseok leans back on his hands and arches a brow.

_Fuck. Why the fuck are you so sexy, you temptress?_

"Oh, I know. If given the chance, you can speak for everyone."

Minhyuk cants his head up. "And I'll be brilliant at it. You won’t find a better spokesperson than me even in lands far away."

Hoseok grins. “I don't doubt that."

They both look at each other and start giggling, drunk on each other.

Kihyun slaps his back. "We’re still waiting on the answer, oh silver-tongued one."

Like a shy lover's hand, Hoseok's eyes let go of him. He looks at the ground but Minhyuk’s gaze stays stuck on his eyelashes.

_Say it, you coward._

"In private. I would like to kiss him in private."

Hoseok looks up suddenly, eyes doe-eyed with genuine surprise.

Kihyun jerks down Minhyuk's head. "You smooth motherfucker.”

Minhyuk swats his hand away and looks at Hoseok.

He looks so lost and innocent with his eyes still wide with surprise that Minhyuk starts feeling guilty for putting him in a position like this.

He hangs his head, looking for words to take back everything, when something touches his hair.

He looks up and finds Hoseok, red-cheeked, standing in front of him and offering him his hand.

Now, it’s Minhyuk’s turn to look surprised.

Swallowing his confusion, he puts on an Oscar-worthy charade of confidence as he grabs Hoseok’s hand and gets up.

Hoseok’s grip is tight on his hands as he leads Minhyuk away from the center of the party. Excited chatter following their exit.

Hoseok leads Minhyuk to a little nook behind the water tanks, away from the loud music and prying eyes and Minhyuk realises that Hoseok must have spent a lot of time at Kihyun’s place to know every inch of it even in the dark.

Once there, Hoseok stops and looks down at their joined hands and then behind Minhyuk's ear. An amused smile on his face, pink dusting his cheeks.

"Is that a pink...camellia?"

Minhyuk pulls it out and stares at it. "Yeah."

Hoseok with his obsession for flowers, and countless flower scrapbooks looks so happy when Minhyuk confirms it that he doesn't have the heart to tell him that he actually has no idea.

Hoseok drops his hand and stands against the wall.

"Is it for...me?" Hoseok asks while gently tugging Minhyuk by his shirt to make him stand in front of him.

Even as Minhyuk complies by stepping forward, Hoseok’s hand stays in his shirt as though fearing that Minhyuk will run away if he lets go. And, yet, his grip is loose enough to show if Minhyuk wants to run away, he can.

Hoseok is always so considerate unlike everyone else he has met, and god, Minhyuk likes him so very much unlike anyone else he has met.

Minhyuk takes another step-forward until their faces are almost touching but not quite.

_I am not running away now._

He tucks the flower behind Hoseok's ears. "Yeah. It’s for you."

Hoseok flushes, his face more pink than the flower as he fists Minhyuk's shirt.

Minhyuk doesn’t know what has touched him so, and he wishes he did so he could do it again and again to see Hoseok like this.

Hoseok leans his head up, and gives him the widest of his gummy smiles, eyes glinting with wetness, and Minhyuk can't believe this is actually happening right now.

As far as he knows, before today, he could tell from all the too loving glances at his person that there was a possibility that Hoseok liked him back. But, it was a weak guess because Hoseok looked at everything and everyone lovingly.

Minhyuk once spotted him looking at a yellow balloon with so much affection that he snatched it, put some distance between them because Hoseok got startled by abrupt noise easily, shouted at him to close his ears and eyes, and then punctured the slutty balloon out of jealousy.

So, after a long time of uncertainty, this mutual intensity between them is going to his head.

They’re so close.

Hoseok slowly lifts his hands towards his face, pausing for a moment to read his reaction. Minhyuk leans forward and puts his face in Hoseok's hands himself. Hoseok laughs and cups his face.

"Thank you for the flower,” he says softly while touching Minhyuk's cheeks with a feather-like touch.

Minhyuk melts.

No one touches him so delicately and speaks to him with such gentleness and gives him so many smiles like Hoseok does. And that's why his relationship with Hoseok is special.

But it’s not about roughness or gentleness, not really. It’s about Hoseok. Everything that he does and is, evokes so much affection in Minhyuk that sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with himself except swallow Hoseok whole.

He still remembers how his heart almost jumped out of his chest in excitement the time he teased, teased, teased Hoseok at the carnival and called him a baby until Hoseok started huffing and puffing. When he tried to move away, Hoseok grabbed his arm, yanked him towards himself, and dragged him to the rollercoaster to prove Minhyuk wrong, grip tight on his wrist.

Minhyuk did it again and again to provoke that roughness out of him, and every time Hoseok reacted he felt his heart fluttering madly.

But, even if that uncharacteristic roughness tightened the coil of sexual tension between them, what drew Minhyuk towards him was the softness that everyone could see in Hoseok even from far away.

It was this kind of naive and innocent way that he moved through the world that drew Minhyuk in, and then he got the chance to look and uncover Hoseok layer by layer and found defiance, this roughness about him that he used when he rebelled, and he rebelled a lot.

He is the most confusing person that he has met and that's why he is special to Minhyuk.

Hoseok evokes a protective and affectionate side of him like Jooheon and similarly to Jooheon, he receives and wears love so well.

But, unlike with Jooheon, Minhyuk also wants to be protected by Hoseok, to be handled gently, looked at with affection, caressed, babied, thrown around, yanked about, snarled at, thrown onto a wall, bit, kissed. Loved. That’s all.

No one treats him with that perfect balance of roughness and gentleness except Hoseok, and maybe Hy-

“I think that I-” Hoseok begins.

Minhyuk cuts him off. "I know that it doesn't mean anything now but I really like you. I have really, really liked you for a long time." Words rushed, eyes closed.

He doesn’t have the guts to hear what Hoseok was going to say. An invitation or maybe disapproval? He can’t wait for that. He’d much rather wait for acceptance or rejection.

His eyes stay closed as seconds of silence turn into centuries until Hoseok shouts some gibberish and crushes his body against him in a tight embrace.

“I like you too. So much.”

_Oh fuck._

A burst of loud laughter comes from not so far away, Minhyuk hears it clearly because he feels so aware of everything around him.

He is aware of Hoseok’s warmth against him, he is aware of the tingling twist in his chest and stomach, he is aware of the full moon illuminating their embrace so shamelessly, he is aware of Hoseok’s arms coiling more tightly around Minhyuk with every passing second, he is aware of his knees weakening.

_“I like you too. So much.”_

Oh, wow. Wow.

“Hoseok, you are crushing me,” Minhyuk says because he wants to live through this moment even though he would like to be crushed like this again and again.

Hoseok laughs and loosens his vice-like hold but he keeps Minhyuk there. So very close to him. This is nice. This is the nicest place he has been in. He wants to make a bed - if not a house - out of Hoseok and lie there forever.

But.

But, Hoseok is leaving. He is leaving for college three-hours away which is not that far away literally but in the other sense, it is.

Why would he wait for Minhyuk when he can have everything that Minhyuk can give to him and so much more at a hand’s distance, in his uni, in his room, on his bed?

Why deal with the hassle that is Minhyuk’s neediness when they’ll be forced to stay apart for weeks because it’s Minhyuk’s last year and he has to study hard, and it’s Hoseok’s first year of college but he always works hard. So, how?

Maybe they don't have any future, so Minhyuk can’t let this go without taking at least a little bit of Hoseok in the present.

Lips against Hoseok’s shoulder so that his voice comes out muffled, Minhyuk asks, “Can I kiss you?”

Hoseok leans back, expression confused. “What?”

Minhyuk looks down, presses his lips, then looks up, face determined. “Can I kiss you, please?”

Hoseok nods his head quickly and then realizing his too enthusiastic response, he slows down.

Minhyuk nods back and then pauses because now what? He has the answer to the question that he has asked in his head so many times. Now, what? What comes next?

He doesn’t have to ponder about such pesky questions because his enabler rises on his tip-toes and gives him a quick peck, slightly catching his mouth.

Before he can go back, Minhyuk grabs his face and kisses him full on the mouth, a simple touch. Both of them, testing the waters.

“Can I kiss you? Like _Kiss kiss_ you?” Hoseok asks.

“What do you mean? That was a kiss?” Minhyuk asks, faking confusion.

Hoseok rolls his eyes. He never really buys into Minhyuk’s innocent lies.

“That's how parents kiss their babies. Let me show you what an actual kiss is.”

“As if you are the expert.” Minhyuk pouts.

“I am,” Hoseok grins. “I am going to eat you up,” he says in the same half-laughing tone, and that’s how Minhyuk knows he means it.

“Action speaks louder than words.”

They grin at each other before Hoseok yanks him down by his neck and kisses him again. And, there it is, the roughness.

This kiss is louder, beginning with the accidental clack of teeth and then dissolving into biting and sucking so quickly that Minhyuk has to grab Hoseok’s shoulders because _fuck_. He presses himself deeper into Hoseok even as he feels his knees giving up but he doesn’t have to worry because Hoseok is unstoppable as he keeps licking into him with such uncharacteristic ferocity as if he has waited for this forever.

Finally, sated or tired, Hoseok steps back slowly, eyes never leaving Minhyuk..

Minhyuk looks back, breathing hard, the white of his eyes screaming his surprise.

Hoseok starts giggling and before Minhyuk can ask why, he pecks Minhyuk’s lips again. And again. And again. And again.

“What the hell are you so cute for, Minhyuk?”

See? Now he is soft.

How do you keep up with this?

Minhyuk can’t look at him. He can’t. He feels so, ugh, _everything_.

He throws his arms around Hoseok’s shoulders and presses their bodies against each other like the moon wants to be pressed against the sun.

Minhyuk buries his face in Hoseok’s neck. If they had a future, this would be his favourite spot.

“I can’t believe that this is actually happening. That you actually like me back.”

Hoseok arms loop around Minhyuk's waist, hands holding his sides, bolder than before. "Are you surprised?"

"Yeah- no. No, I had my doubts."

"I thought that I was being very obvious."

Minhyuk nods against him. "I feel like an idiot for not telling you sooner."

"I'll wait for you."

"Huh?"

_Huh?_

Hoseok pulls back from him, his expression serious. "I said that I'll wait for you."

"But, you’re graduating! You’re going to college while I’m still stuck in this sucky high-school for another year. You'll meet so much better people there, and what if we end up in different colleges? You can't predict the future!” Minhyuk says, unable to hide the excitement in his voice even as he tries to be the realistic one. “What if I become an arsonist and start lighting kittens on fire? I mean – not that I would do that. Oh god, that's such a horrible image. I swear I'd never hurt an animal in my life."

Hoseok rises on his tip-toes, getting in front of Minhyuk's face. "Kiss me again."

Minhyuk takes a deep breath and puts his hand on the back of Hoseok's head. "Yeah. Okay."

They kiss tentatively as if they hadn’t just plunged into each other a moment ago. Soft lips raking against each other, tongue touching, and then retreating. Hoseok clutches Minhyuk's shirt and pulls him in deeper and then Minhyuk is getting sucked into Hoseok again.

When they part, Minhyuk smiles goofily. "You taste sweet."

Hoseok tilts his head and smacks his lips. "You taste like cheap beer."

Minhyuk pouts.

Hoseok pulls him in for another kiss.

"I like cheap beer." Whispered against his lips. "I'll wait for you." A kiss on his cheek. “If you want me to wait, I’ll wait for you.” A kiss on his other cheek. “If you want me to, I’ll wait a year or four. Doesn’t matter,” Hoseok finishes, as he starts moving towards his neck, leaving biting kisses along the way.

Minhyuk tilts his head sideways, hands now raking through Hoseok's hair, silently encouraging him.

"You'll regret saying this when you get into college and end up being the only person not having sex."

Hoseok bites his neck abruptly and Minhyuk moans, promptly going red in the face because of his reaction.

"Oh." Hoseok says, excited like he found something that he wants to hear again and again. "I'll visit you. You'll visit me. It's going to be fine."

"Hoseo-"

Hoseok softly bites into the flesh where his neck meets the shoulder. Minhyuk grinds his teeth, forcibly stopping any sound. He refuses to give Hoseok the satisfaction again.

Hoseok starts stroking his waist with his thumbs, and this is dangerous, Minhyuk thinks as he feels his body going lax.

"Baby, please. Please. We have waited a year without this.” Hoseok kisses his cheek again, this time longer, deeper, using the nickname so naturally, as though he has said it a million times inside his head. “ Can’t we wait for another with this?" A kiss on his nose.

With every touch and word, Minhyuk feels malleable like clay, ready to be shaped for Hoseok.

Hoseok leans his forehead against Minhyuk. "What would you like, Minhyuk?"

Minhyuk feels as though his heart has grown arms and is currently, rattling the steel of his rib-cage, begging to be let out to confess its needs.

He breathes deeper and focuses on Hoseok’s hands on his waist.

_Leave your fingerprints on me._

Arms that have no strength left wrap around Hoseok's hands.

_Stretch me to my limits._

Minhyuk nuzzles Hoseok’s cheeks. This close, he catches Hoseok’s breath quickening. Minhyuk smiles and kisses his ear.

_Take me in your hands and shape me into what you want._

He takes Hoseok's hand and puts it under his shirt. Hoseok's hands softly rake against his waist.

_I feel so hollow at times. I want you to mold me in your shape and then fill me with you._

Hoseok's hands tickle his lower stomach, the butterflies there, struggle against the nest, waiting for Minhyuk to give in like he so desperately wants to.

_When I pull something out of me, I want it to have your color. I want my fingers, my words, my soul to be stained with you._

Hoseok kisses his jaw, now moving his whole hand on Minhyuk's stomach. The flutters grow intense.

Love. Lust. Need. Want.

Minhyuk doesn't know how he is still standing.

He feels the camellia touching his cheek before Hoseok steps back, pulling his hands away and leaving him completely.

“I’m sorry. I- You don’t have to answer me just now.” Hoseok says, looking conflicted. “Take your time.”

**_"Go get your guy."_ **

The nest tears up.

Letting go, Minhyuk puts his whole weight against Hoseok who startles but holds him up, bending to keep Minhyuk from falling.

"I don’t want you to wait."

“Oh,” Hoseok says, voice small.

Minhyuk looks down and stares directly into Hoseok’s eyes. “What I mean is,“ a reckless grin. “Does the distance matter? I want you as my boyfriend right now.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah, let’s just date already.”

***

"Have a nice day!" Minhyuk smiles, wide and sunny, as he hands the customer her change.

The customer takes it absent-mindedly and mumbles her thanks, her eyes dead behind thick glasses, dark circles prominent like a statement on capitalism.

When they first opened the cafe here, Minhyuk wasn't quite keen on it. He wanted the cafe of their dreams to be situated near a university campus. With their bright demeanor and quick gummy smiles, Hoseok and he were made to fit in among the rosy-cheeked, and bright-eyed youth.

They had scouted every unmarked inch of those roads and finally found a nook. He remembers lying on Hoseok's chest and rambling about the decor, the menus, the events they could host while shoving every Pinterest moodboard he could find in Hoseok's face while Hoseok kept grumbling sleepily, loose limbs holding Minhyuk even though he was annoyed.

He also remembers Hoseok sitting him down, eyes low and apprehensive, and telling him that putting all their money in a place already saturated with cafes was meant to be doomed.

So, they chose this place.

The new cyber hub, the call-center city in the making.

It had youth with degrees but no job prospects in their desired fields. It had huge buildings, housing clusters of call-centers and offices. It had people going in and out, day and night, shoulders hunched under the burden of their dying dreams.

They looked at this desert and chose to make their oasis in it.

Buildings almost touching the sky, reeking capitalism, herds of people with gloom hanging off their backs - it had everything that scared Minhyuk, that made his heart weigh a tonne, and he wasn't sure if their gummy smiles were wanted here or if his sponge-like soul would survive this every day.

Hoseok told him not to overthink it.

"You don't have to be genuine or anything! Your happiness can be a performance. So, on the days the apathy of the customers is sucking out your joy, remember that all you have to do is switch off and perform." A half-shrug. "Everyone does it."

He had said it so easily, so naturally. And Minhyuk was so lost in everything that he didn't stop and ask, "Why do you say that? Are you not happy? Are _you_ performing?"

There's no sword sharper than hindsight. And it's moments like these - one careless sentence here, one look of loathing quickly covered up by a wide grin there - that flash through your mind and gut you every night because why didn't you take a moment to stop and ask, "Hey, hey. Are you okay? What makes you say that?" or "Hey, hey. Are you okay? You look so sad."

But, you didn't and now you have to live with that.

In the beginning, after Hoseok's death, that's all he could think of: Why didn't you ask him? You breathe him. You are him. How did you miss all of this? What were you doing so wrong that he had to hide his pain from you? Why did you make it so that he couldn’t be honest about himself with you? Why did you keep rushing through life? What was so important? What was more important than him? Why didn't you stop and just fucking ask him?

It's supposed to get better with time, right? But, for him, it got worse because then those questions turned inwards. Introspection on acid.

Does everyone perform? Does no one feel happiness? Is there nothing like genuine joy? Something deeper than a momentary laugh, something more than a tingle that lightens your chest?

Is it all fiction? Is everyone just talking themselves into happiness rather than it being something instinctual?

If there is something like genuine happiness, is he wired to feel that? Or are his chemicals all wack? Or what if they aren’t and he is just a miserable person simply because?

Has he ever felt happiness? Or has he been unknowingly performing all this while?

He used to wince at the blank eyes, dark circles and hunched shoulders of his patrons but now - "Thank you. Have a nice day!"

It's comfortable.

Changkyun bumps his shoulders, leaning forward until he is in Minhyuk's face. "Your smile is so creepy."

Minhyuk makes eye-contact with him and widens his smile. Changkyun gives a mock shudder while wrapping his arms around himself.

Minhyuk's smile softens as he shakes his head and ruffles Changkyun's hair. "Why is it creepy?"

Changkyun closes his eyes and lets himself be petted. "It looks so genuine."

Minhyuk doesn't look away. He feels too tired to keep up his performance today. "It is genuine."

Changkyun scoffs. "Okay." He moves away and continues with wiping the counter. "Your boyfriend came here yesterday."

Minhyuk's heart thumps harshly against his chest as all of his thoughts come to a halt. In the remaining silence of his mind, the word "boyfriend" roars. Like an open steel door in a storm, his heart rattles on its hinges, feeling like it would unhinge on the next bang.

All of this because he heard the word "boyfriend" and his brain decided that it couldn’t be a nice, neutral word anymore. No, it had to come with its own memories and pain.

Now, how do you tell someone that ‘Boyfriend’ triggers you and not sound like an absolutely pathetic person?

"Excuse me?"

Changkyun grimaces in obvious regret. "I didn't mean–" He hunkers into himself until all Minhyuk can see is his back. "I was just teasing you. I meant Hyungwon. Sorry."

Minhyuk gathers his fingers into a fist, tightens it until he can feel all five of his nails digging into his flesh.

He is not angry at Changkyun, he is angry at himself for not just swallowing it and moving on, for reacting so wildly to everything even barely related to Hoseok some days.

Just how many days will be “one of those days”?

His jaw hurts with the strength of his gritting, Minhyuk barely manages to shove his rage in and put it behind the still rattling steel door of his heart because, no, not today. He refuses. It’s been a year. No more. Please.

He takes a deep breath and turns away, hoping that the tightness of his throat will not be betrayed by his voice if he hides his face. "No, it’s okay. Uh–sorry. Yeah."

Changkyun grabs his shoulder, turns him around and engulfs him tenderly, with so much care, like he can feel Minhyuk’s pain and wants to protect him from it.

Minhyuk doesn’t return the hug, his own arms lying by his side because this is too much. It’s another acknowledgement that he is not just hurting himself but also his friends. Sadness can be so contagious and he keeps spreading it.

He needs to get over it already.

He tries to pull back but a hand behind his head keeps him there, refusing to let go of him until finally Minhyuk gives in and holds Changkyun like he wants to hold Hoseok.

It’s just one of those days, after all.

When they separate Changkyun stares at him, his forehead wrinkled in concentration, like he is trying to find bits of the older Minhyuk, the loud, chaotic one, the one who made people laugh, the one who so proudly wore his “sunshine” status.

But, the thing is, whoever that Minhyuk was, he seems too distant now, almost like another person rather than his own past.

He has always been so grateful to his friends for taking care of him during the days he couldn’t take care of himself. He has also been so grateful to them for giving him room to sort out his own head and heart.

But, sometimes, he thinks that, much like him, they are waiting for the older Minhyuk to come back and he isn’t sure if he ever will.

He isn’t even sure if he actually existed ever.

All he knows is that he is too tired, too jaded, to keep up with the performance now.

It's just one of those days after all.

But how many days till everyone realises that no, it's not a day, it's who Minhyuk is now and maybe forever?

How many days till everyone realises that he is going to roll in his misery forever and get fed up with him?

How many days till everyone realises that he is dead weight, passively letting himself be pulled into the quicksand, and abandon him?

His friends are expecting him to struggle, to fight, to go out for walks, to start dating again, to do anything that would get them their "sunshine" back but Minhyuk can't. It's so tiring and futile. He has tried. It just doesn't work.

It's just one of those forever lasting days, after all.

***

Minhyuk splashes cold water on his face. Swallowing down the guilt of wasting water, he keeps the tap running as he looks at himself in the mirror.

"Who are you?"

A few hours ago, Changkyun's stare had asked him that or maybe he was projecting and he himself was the one asking that.

It doesn’t matter now when the question rings in his ear like a beep. While it's there, he won't be able to focus on something else.

"Who am I?" He whispers to the mirror in front of him.

"I am–I think I am made of Hoseok. But, Hoseok is dead. Then, aren't I just an animated corpse? Made of dead parts? Doing everything living but...actually dead?" He asks aloud because he had figured it out months before that if he asked such questions aloud, he would hear the ridiculousness of most of them and abandon them.

If he asked them internally, his brain would try to make sense of it until it actually did and the result would be another ghost that would haunt him.

The mirror, obstinate, maintains its silent stoicism, refusing to give any answers and his brain, another unforgivingly rigid thing, denies his wish and starts working on making sense of the question that he just asked.

The interruptive knock on the door is a blessing, really.

A voice that used to be sharp, excited and so full of youth, now sounds jaded, passive and aged as it says, "Minhyuk?"

If voices could hunch, then Jooheon's would. Is sadness this contagious? Is he the carrier?

"Come in, Jooheon."

Jooheon slides in and closes the door behind him without letting a peeking Changkyun enter.

Minhyuk turns off the tap and turns around. They give each other weak smiles. Fortunately or unfortunately, when it's just the two of them, they have stopped faking genuineness into their smiles.

"How are you, honey?"

Jooheon's eyes glide over the mirror besides Minhyuk and bounce off just as quickly. Jooheon clenches his eyes shut as if the image in the mirror shook him and he needs a moment to collect himself.

Minhyuk moves in front of the mirror, covering whatever Jooheon can’t keep his eyes from even though it’s hurting him. He lets Jooheon have that without any questions, any reassurance or any movement really because he understands the need for stillness now.

If he had to look for a silver lining, he understands Jooheon's needs better now.

"Changkyun told me that you were–"

Minhyuk shakes his head and hears his own bitter laughter echoing within the four walls of the bathroom. The ugliness of that sound gets stuck between them as it bounces off the walls and wraps around them instead of dissipating into the air.

"I overreacted. It's whatever."

Jooheon looks at him for a moment, facial expression going in so many different directions as if he wants to say so many things but he can’t.

Minhyuk wants to hear what Jooheon wants to say so badly. There have been so many moments in the last year where Jooheon makes the same expression as now, and Minhyuk waits with bated breath only for Jooheon to turn and change the topic.

“What are you thinking about right now, Minhyuk?”

Here it is again.

“Do you think that I’ve changed? Do I feel like a different person now?” Minhyuk provides because he’ll feign ignorance until Jooheon is ready. And, also, maybe, because he is a bit scared of Jooheon's words too. They are obviously difficult to say, and if he knows Jooheon even a little bit, they would be difficult to hear as well.

"I think–” Jooheon stops and looks at the mirror again, only to find it covered by Minhyuk’s form.

"You think?" Minhyuk encourages him, not because he thinks that Jooheon's wisdom will crack open his own third eye and he'll achieve enlightenment. He wants him to speak because Jooheon has stopped speaking.

Maybe he never did and Minhyuk never noticed.

It's only now that Jooheon has given up on trying to fake mundane conversations about nothing that kept people from trying to dig deeper into him, that Minhyuk has started really paying attention.

But, also, because he wants to listen to Jooheon talk about himself.

It's his futile hope that Jooheon will crack open and spill his guts to him. And, like in a movie, it will be Minhyuk's moment. Every puzzle piece of pain and growth and happiness and stagnation will come together. He'll see the big picture finally, he'll know the answers to life's questions, and Plato and Aristotle will burn in jealousy as he solves Jooheon's problem. Then, he'll take those teachings and with the boost of altruism, he'll squeeze out his own pain without annihilating himself.

"I think that–Minhyuk?"

"Yes?"

"I think you are still in there. I think you are...you? You’re just hiding. I mean–You–okay.” Jooheon pauses and looks at Minhyuk as if seeking permission to speak his mind. Minhyuk doesn’t understand why he needs permission but gives him another encouraging nod regardless. “I think of it like this, you are buried under a sheet with your face covered. Like when you have to cry but you don't want anyone to see you that way? Yes. That's what's happening. You’re under the sheet and you’re crying and hiding but when you decide to throw away that sheet, it would be you. Even now, it's you. You’re under the sheet. It's still you under there. It's you. The core of you as a person? That’s you. We constantly change, you know? So, you would be different but it still would be you, you know? Does that make sense?”

Jooheon scares Minhyuk. He scares him because he sees the world and Minhyuk so clearly. If he, with all his awareness, can't escape his own mind that entangles and traps him so, then, what hope does Minhyuk, with his foggy vision, have? None, maybe. He should just give up. It sounds so easy. So comforting.

"Minhyuk? Did it not make sense?"

Minhyuk hugs him. Jooheon has been dealt such a shitty hand and Minhyuk has nothing on him. His pain is nothing compared to Jooheon's lived reality. Minhyuk got so many years to be careless. At least, his suffering isn’t inherent.

"Yeah, it made sense. Are you okay, honey?"

"Yeah, of course. Why do you ask that?” Jooheon asks him, voice shaky with nerves, scared that his secret is out.

Minhyuk wants to tell him that he doesn’t think that Jooheon is doing okay, but how do you gather the courage to say that? How do you assume the arrogance to tell your friend that, knowing that you might be wrong and now you have planted sadness where there was none before? Or how do you make sure that calling them out like this instead of letting them come to you is the right call and wouldn't mess everything up? Or what if you use the wrong words and do irreparable damage to your relationship?

How do you even begin?

Minhyuk holds him tighter. "You’re not ‘okay’, you’re ‘Jooheon’."

Jooheon sighs so deeply that it tickles Minhyuk’s neck. "A dad joke? Forget it. You have really changed, Minhyuk. You are a completely different person now. You’re so lame.”

Minhyuk hits him even as he smiles. "Learn to respect your elders, kid."

Jooheon shakes his head. "Hyungwon said the exact same thing to me yesterday. He’s staying at _my_ house, using _my_ things, eating the food that _I_ am making, and he had the audacity to say that? There’s something wrong with you and Hyungwon. Oh and Kihyun. There’s something with all three of you.”

"Yeah. That's great." Minhyuk caresses Jooheon’s hair, his nose pressed against Jooheon’s forehead, a little lost in the fresh baby smell that he always associates with Jooheon when he actually realizes what Jooheon just said.

He pulls back and stares at Jooheon with wide eyes “Wait, Hyungwon? Hyungwon is staying with you?”

Jooheon nods. “Yeah, he’s crashing at my place until he finds his own.”

“His...own?” Minhyuk asks, feeling something bubbling below his skin. Hurt, anger, happiness, excitement, maybe all, maybe nothing but only disappointment because–

“Hyungwon didn’t tell me that,” He says quietly.

After Hyungwon’s visit, Minhyuk had been expecting a push to their stagnant friendship, but after the last text, things fizzled out again.

The next morning, every vibration of his phone had him looking at his screen but Hyungwon’s text never came and there they were again, stagnant and awkward.

Minhyuk can’t help but feel like it’s his fault. That he did something wrong.

Jooheon pats his back. “He’s not sure about moving yet. It’s all in the air. He was probably waiting to finalize things before telling you.”

Minhyuk pouts. “I am not a child. He could have just told me.”

Jooheon shakes his head and grins, eyes glinting with sudden excitement. “Well, did you want him to tell you?”

Hidden behind benign curiosity, Jooheon's tone is loaded. It irks Minhyuk, makes him dig in his feet deeper, and want to keep his answers to himself, so he shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders. So carefully casual, even he can see through his facade.

It's when Jooheon stares at him, all wise and knowing, that Minhyuk actually acknowledges the question.

In lieu of an actual answer, niggling at the back of his mind, a thought, camouflaged so brilliantly like a chameleon in the green grass, wiggles surreptitiously.

Does he want Hyungwon to tell him?

Their relationship has always been so fragile, so tumultuous in the most uncomplicated of ways. It's just their dynamic. Nothing too complicated behind it.

They have been close–a soft touch of lips against his flashes through his mind– _too close_ , but they have also been distant.

Among all the words that can be used to describe a relationship, there is none that Minhyuk can find, that will cleanly define theirs.

Like clothes on a growing teen, the fit is always off.

‘Acquaintanceship’ is like a too short and tight shirt that he’s outgrown and now leaves his skin bare when he lifts his arms.

It seems too cold for what they have.

While on the other hand, ‘friendship’ seems like the too-long jeans that he kept folding while waiting for his growth spurt.

The label seems too much for what they have. Too intimate for their sparse communication.

Such distance and yet, Hyungwon was the one that Minhyuk clung to when they were sitting in the bathroom of Kihyun's parents’ place, Minhyuk sobbing because it just came to his mind that he should have cooked something favourite of Hoseok’s as a tribute at his funeral.

Their relationship had always been so hot and cold. It wasn't something that he used to give much thought to before but ever since Hoseok's death his mind had been such a mess. Picking up random things and getting obsessed with them for weeks like his life depended on it but as soon as he started making any progress, his mind would start chanting _it doesn't matter_ until even the sight of it became a stark reminder of his own failure and started choking him.

He has given up on hobbies and picked up something that feels more substantial, something that matters. He has now started to obsess over his relationships with everyone, quantifying their intimacy, honesty and fragility.

So, currently, after pottery, he is obsessed with defining his relationships. Even after spending days over this, he is still hunting for a word or a phrase that will prettily and cleanly define his distant-but-intimate relationship with Hyungwon.

The best that he could come up with is that their relationship is like the oversized t-shirt his mum bought him when he was 16, hoping that he'll grow into it, but he never did. So much room, so much potential in there that never got fulfilled. But rather than being a reminder of another failure, it's the shirt that gives him comfort, something that he still wears when he seeks warmth and healing.

Hyungwon is removed enough from his life that his face doesn't suffocate him like everyone else's does but Hyungwon knows him enough, cares about him enough, that Minhyuk feels comforted just by his mere presence and he wants to gorge himself on that feeling because it's so rare and so addictive.

He didn't know that was what he needed until he saw Hyungwon but now that he has had a taste, he desperately needs that comfort, that familiarity, that healing.

So, did he want Hyungwon to tell him that he was moving back?

_Maybe._

"Stop thinking so much. It's okay to admit that you want to talk to someone who is not us."

Minhyuk shakes his head, denying without really putting any effort into it. Jooheon has always been so astute, he'll figure it out regardless of the veracity of Minhyuk's vague gestures.

Maybe Jooheon is the protagonist who'll have a revelation and solve Minhyuk's problem rather than the other way around.

It would be nice to be the passive side-character in his own life. His decisions wouldn't mean much. It would be nice to blame someone else for the mess that he has made out of his life for a change.

"I guess."

***

It's almost eerie the way Hoseok has timed his emails, Minhyuk thinks as he sits down on the toilet seat, trembling hands holding his phone.

They opened this cafe three years ago, and since then his schedule has changed many times. In the beginning, he was the one who used to open the cafe at 6 in the morning to serve the rush of night-shift workers leaving for home, then with a careful slow blink of eyes and slow kisses, he got Hoseok to do it and started coming at 12 in the afternoon and so on. All these changes in his schedule and life and yet his half-an-hour walk at 5 in the evening and using the washroom before that, at exactly 4:50, stayed consistent.

That still hasn't changed. Hoseok set the email for 4:55, right around the time he is rinsing his face in the staff washroom, alone with the door shut, because he feels weird scrubbing his face in front of other people.

It’s perfect like before, he is alone, his workday is drawing close to an end, he is free to leave and do whatever Hoseok has set for him.

Either Minhyuk is infuriatingly predictable or Hoseok is deceptively cunning.

He looks at the notification bar and sees Hoseok's name. For a second, he pretends that he doesn't want to read it right now, this instant.

He doesn't want another crying session like the one he had in the morning. He is so close, just one more hour of work before Hyunwoo will come and replace him. He should hold out. This is going to ruin him for the rest of the day.

He should wait but instead, he opens the email like the world is burning and this is his last wish as his limbs catch on fire.

He takes a deep breath and hopes that voluntary immolation will hurt less.

**Hey baby! (man! dude! BRO!)**

Minhyuk exhales loudly. Oh, even in death, you are so insufferable.

**I am lying down on your bed thinking about what to write because honestly, this is it. If I die, this is the last impression of me that you'll have.**

**(Other than the man that you dated for seven years who kinda died on you without telling you that he was going to die but let's not get stuck in the semantics, okay? I am invoking my don't-speak-ill-of-the-dead guy constitutional right here. I was a perfect angel to you. Never did anything wrong. Anything spoken against my person is invalid and factually wrong. WRONG. I am covering my ears with my angel wings right now as you curse my name, so honestly, you are spending your energy on the wrong thing, sunshine. Stop being negative. Let me gaslight you. I WAS A PERFECT BABY BOY ANGEL. Stop manifesting negative energy, click this link - Hoseoktasteslikesugar.com and find out how I became a millionaire by working from home–)**

Minhyuk rolls his eyes, head shaking in disapproval even though he can't help the amused quirk of his lips.

Minhyuk can’t help but be nostalgic because of the tone.

When Hoseok was in college, he would write letters to Minhyuk and give them to him when they met. Minhyuk would go back home and read and reread and squeal and blush and laugh at them. They used to be like this. Unfiltered stream of consciousness interspersed with things that happened to him. Hoseok made Minhyuk return the letters the next time they met because it made him anxious.

“I feel like I am constantly changing and it worries me that someone has a hold of my past in such a tangible form. They will look at these words and make out the wrong image of me. Also, I don’t know, words are so ambiguous. When I look at them, they seem all wrong. I don’t want you to have that imperfect version of me.”

Minhyuk gave them back easily even though he never understood why it would make Hoseok anxious, why he would be so scared of being frozen in time, or why he would think of his feelings and words as imperfect. But, he gave them back, secretly hoping that one day, Hoseok would trust him to keep and cherish his past, his feelings, his words, and his worries.

That day never really came and along the way, Minhyuk forgot that there was so much underlying melancholy to Hoseok that had kind of gotten lost on him as the time passed because Hoseok saw how sadness affected Minhyuk and started protecting him more, even if it meant swallowing down his own misery. They started with protecting each other from the world to ending with protecting each other from, well, each other.

**Sorry! Where was I? Yeah, so this is a lot of pressure because this is the last direct communication that I'll have with you. As the years will pass, you'll forget the shape of my words and you'll look at these emails, maybe, and this is how you'll remember me.**

Forget the shape of his words? Is this possible? Is it possible to forget something like that? Maybe, Minhyuk will forget his own essence one day but...

_Forget the shape of your words? When they are carved on my flesh with every grin pressed against my skin?_

_Forget the shape of your words? When they ring like nightmarish chants in my head some days?_

_Forget the shape of your words? -_ Minhyuk's grip tightens on his phone, jaw clenched _\- Fuck. you._

**Now, ugh, what do you write as your final words to your forever partner? Should I confess my love? Because, I do love you, probably in an unhealthy-too-much way, but you already know that (don't you?) Should I tell you about my life? But you already know it, how can you not when you lived it with me?**

Did he actually know about Hoseok’s life though?

Did he know the things that actually mattered?

He didn’t even know that Hoseok was taking meds for the past 4 years before his death. He didn’t know that he was going for surgery right after Minhyuk kissed him a happy birthday. He didn’t know that Hoseok was looking into therapists. He doesn’t even know what made him look into therapists in the first place. He didn’t know that Hoseok thought of his love as unhealthy and too much.

He doesn’t know anything.

He is self-obsessed and he doesn’t even know himself anymore.

Hoseok is giving him too much credit.

_I am not a child, stop coddling me like this._

**Should I wax poetic so that you can publish these letters and make a lot of money? (Aish, I wish!)**

As if. You are way too protective of your words.

As if. I am way too protective of your memories. Possessive almost. Is there where the unhealthy-too-much love comes in?

**So, I am lying in your bed thinking, “What do I tell Minhyuk?” And, I don't know. I , honest to God, have no idea what to say. You should have so much to say before you die, right? And maybe I will, when the time comes. I wonder what will flash through my mind right then. I wish I could know and write my last words accordingly but I don't so I don’t know where to even begin here even though I know how to end. I even knew the beginning somewhat, it’s the middle that’s left me confused, there’s too-much and too-less of me in my head right now and I don’t know how to fit it in without dragging you down in the mud with me. I don’t want to leave you with questions that don’t matter. I want to give you answers and closure, and I am failing terribly at it. I really overestimated myself, huh?**

**Can we just talk, baby? I’ll continue my nefarious schemes in the next one or maybe in this one towards the end but right now, I just want to talk. We haven’t talked, like TALKED in so long. This has been the hardest of the breaks for me. And, I miss you so terribly. I wonder if other people know how great of a listener you are when you are docile?**

**(Is it bad that I don’t really want anyone to know that?)**

**Not talked in so long? The hardest of the breaks?**

The realization dawns on Minhyuk as a memory slithers in his mind. 

**I am lying on your bed after getting my surgery postponed because my hormonal stuff was lower than required and could cause complications during the surgery so they gave me some meds to get those suckers to the right level and postponed the date accordingly. You know what's the new date?**

**MY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!**

**God, don't we just love getting rawed by the universe?**

Hoseok? You...

**So, again, I am lying on your bed and you are lying an arm away from me, sulky because you have been horny and you thought we were going to have our special we-are-having-sex-while-we-are-on-a-break-so-it’s-extra-sexy sex but my meds and just the awareness of this disease has sucked out my drive and the idea of sex produces nothing in me. I feel bone dry in all senses of the word.**

That night..you.

_Oh._

**I couldn't sleep and there's this irrational anxiety inside my chest. It's not heavy, it's, how do I describe this? It's viscous. Like a cough almost? Whatever it is, it's swirling inside my chest and keeps me rooted to the bed like gravity these days.**

**I don't feel hopeless because the doctor told me that the tumor is benign even though it’s big, and they won't even put an incision on my skull. Instead, they'll go through my nasal cavity (Let me repeat that. They are going to play-doh my grey matter by reaching through MY NASAL CAVITY. How? That's so wild to me!)**

An unbidden gasp comes through Minhyuk's throat, the sound equal parts sobbing and surprised. He feels his stomach dropping and the bile rising as for the first time he realizes that..

**So, I am not worried about the surgery at all. I am 99% sure that I am coming out alive and sexy.**

Hoseok didn’t think that he would die.

Minhyuk covers his mouth and swallows and swallows because his throat is tightening, even more, his saliva salty and thick as with each swallowing motion his throat keeps getting tighter, and he wants to gasp in deep breaths but he is too afraid that he is going to vomit if he even opened his mouth. His eyes are tearing from his hurt and his whole body is revolting in reaction to this new information. There are tears, snot and now bile. His heart is heavy, so is his chest. There’s so much happening. He feels like he is clogged up and yet inside his head, his thoughts are running a mile per minute.

Hoseok didn’t think he was going to die.

_Oh god._

He went in there, he went through all of this - visiting the hospital, writing these emails, waiting on Minhyuk’s doorstep drenched in rain to just lie beside him, kissing him goodbye in the cafe - thinking that he was coming back.

_Oh god._

Unable to control his breaths anymore, he opens his mouth and gulps in air like a man drowning, because that’s exactly how he’s feeling right now. Drowning in pain, in incredulity, in cruelty of fate.

For the first time, he feels less betrayed by Hoseok and more betrayed _for_ him.

His heart is aching for Hoseok. So much.

But, he needs to know more. So, he breathes through his mouth until he can feel his body take over for him, effort turning instinctive again, wipes his tears, sniffles deeply and continues reading.

**I was kind of zoning out when the doctor was explaining doctor things and pointing to scans and saying, "You see this round thing here? That's your tumor, it's going in two different directions and we'll try to take it all out but because of its shape, some of it might be left blah blah blah." Hyungwon asked the doctor what are the potential side-effects and the doctor kind of laughed it off and said, "Oh, everything has side-effects but you need to have the surgery even if it's benign because otherwise it'll press on the nerve of your left eye further and you'll lose complete sight in it. As for the pituitary hormonal imbalance, you'll have to take life-long meds for it regardless of if you have surgery or not. The level of meds will decrease once it starts functioning normally after we remove the tumor, but you'll still need meds." Hyungwon did that thing with his face where he gives the fakest smile of all time and looks at him with this I'll-eat-your-children eyes and says, "I didn't ask that. That was my next question, so thank you, but I am asking about the side-effects and the doctor responds back, "Oh, well, anything. We are tinkering with the brain here so loss of sight, speech, movement, behavioral change, change in taste buds, death, etc."**

**DEATH ETC? HELLO? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY DEATH ETC? WHAT'S A 'DEATH ETC'?**

**Anyway, he looked at me then and added, "But, yours is a benign tumor so you don't have to worry about it that much." I kind of feel he just got offended by Hyungwon's tone and added "Death etc" but I don't know for sure. The whole OPD appointment was conducted very quickly. We had to wait 3 hours even though we had an appointment. There was a huge line. The coordinator was running the line of patients like a navy. I realized that it was a momentous moment for me but for the doctor and the staff, it was mundane. There were still so many people after me that I felt guilty sitting there asking questions and taking more time. Just after me, a couple went in, their 4-year-old had a tumor and I know that I am not special by any means but I felt so cold there, Minhyuk.**

**So cold.**

**We scheduled a date for the surgery, he wrote it in his diary and we went to the reception to get the date reserved and got this sheet that lined the estimated bills and that was that. I was in there for 7 minutes max and it would have been lesser if it had only been me because it was only Hyungwon who was asking the questions like "Is nasal less invasive?" "Would he need a second surgery or would you use other methods?" "What will improve after the surgery because we don't even know what was this tumor actually affecting?" I just sat there like a chump because I was too scared to do any actual research.**

**Scared? I don't know. I think I was apathetic. I am apathetic because it's just death, you know? The big orgasm? I know you hate it when I talk like this, so I try not to but I am coming eternally, baby boy, so now you can't touch me with your "Hoseok, stop romanticizing death!" You party pooper.**

Stop it, Minhyuk thinks, sobbing louder, too far gone to care about someone hearing him.

He had thought so many times about what he would have done if he had known, how he would have handled the hospital, the doctors, Hoseok.

He wanted to know what the doctor told Hoseok, how he felt, and now that he is getting the answers, real answers, not imaginary ones, he feels a little masochistic. Because he wants these details, it’s a piece of Hoseok and he wants every piece of Hoseok after realizing that he missed out so many but god, is this hurting him.

Hoseok suffering all of this without him. Hurting so much and keeping it all inside, to what, protect Minhyuk?

Where did Minhyuk go so extremely wrong that his partner had felt the need to protect him instead of seeking protection from him even at such a difficult time?

**The whole appointment was very quick. They told us before leaving that I needed to come four days before the surgery and get tests done which I did and then the universe went: "Oh, here's a happy birthday gift" but I digress.**

**It was quick and cold is what I am trying to say.**

**Four years of not knowing what was wrong with me and the doctor took one look at my face as I entered and casually went, "Oh, you have a pituitary tumor." I mean, I knew it at this point. I had the reports in my hand but still it was such a bizarre experience. I felt like a burger in a fast-food restaurant.**

**There is no place colder than a hospital, Minhyuk.**

**Even graveyards feel like they have more humanity in them.**

_I am so sorry, I am so sorry that I failed you. That you had to do this alone. I hate myself so much. I am so sorry._

**Ugh, I know that I am rambling. I don’t want to leave you with these details. I want you to remember the un-hospital, non-diseased version of me. I want to live like that in your memories.**

_Is that why you never told me? Is that the answer? Please, just tell me. Please._

It’s at this point that Minhyuk realizes that if he wants to keep reading it, he needs to shut off his brain, his heart, whatever that’s making it difficult to keep on reading. He is okay sobbing, hiccuping, crying but he needs to read this. Right now. Or the world will end or something. He needs to get through all of this. These are pieces of Hoseok, dead as they are, he feels so complete just absorbing them into his being even though everything inside him is hurting so much.

_Come on, Minhyuk._

**I will probably delete all this but I am just writing as it’s all coming to me because I just want to talk. I was so good with my first email! I kept it short and funny and concise but I wrote it kinda...oh god, I will sound like a complete chad here but I started writing it kinda ironically because there is not one cell in my body (including the ones in the tumor! ha, where's my Netflix special?) that believes that I am going to die.**

**I just don't.**

**Call it human condition or my tendency to distance myself from reality most of the time but I don't think that I am going to die. I started writing it...just because. I was sitting outside your place, waiting for you to come and look at me like you look at me even though we are on a break.**

**I only wanted you to look at me because I was so cold and you are always so warm and I love you. Then, you took me inside, asked me how I was feeling, smiled at me, caressed my face, watched a movie with me, told me it's okay if I want to spend a night here and then we kissed and I want you so much but I can't even get it up because I just can't with anything right now even though I don't think this tumor is a big deal. But you looked at me and saw something in me which made you wrap me in your arms, your long arms enveloping me so whole, so right, and I don't know. Now you are asleep and I am squinting at my screen and typing this rant because I can't sleep and I don't know. I feel almost compelled. Perhaps, I was made for journaling and never realized it but now that I am writing, I feel so much. I want to say so much.**

**I know that I have said it so many times already, but listen, I am lying on our bed and you are sleeping soundly at an arm’s length away from me and you are so, so, so beautiful and if you are reading this, then either my gut fucked up spectacularly or we are sitting in our room and I have my arms around you as I gather the courage to show you these.**

**But, I am now going to write with the assumption that I died so here's what I absolutely need you to know in this email.**

**\- In the time that we broke up, I had sex with 14 people and I absolutely, madly fell in love with two.**

**\- In the first year of my college, while I was lecturing you to focus on your study, and telling you how I was busy studying, I failed my two exams because I was too busy partying.**

**\- When I was 16, I realized my baseline of existence is skewed. I think whereas other people have neutral as their default, I have sad as mine. I don't think that I have depression because in depression, you are not supposed to feel anything? I think? You feel numb, I have heard. Whereas for me, I feel everything. Too much. Too intensely. Everything but happiness for long periods of time.**

**When I was little, I used to have these days where I would just laugh at everything. My dad used to say, "The more you laugh right now, the harder you'll cry later." I think my brain has internalized that and now whenever I feel happiness, I feel scared. I feel scared that the next moment everything will come crashing down so I suppress that joy. I don't let myself live in it, I roll myself in my anticipated melancholy instead.**

**Feeling at the top of the world one day and feeling at the bottom of everything the other while feeling stupid about the day you were happy? That's not depression, right? That's just....what's that? and how do you get rid of it?**

**I feel guilty for telling you this because if I know you even a little, then you are probably wondering why didn't you see it. But, you shouldn't. You really shouldn't. You want to know why? Because I didn't know that about myself either. It's only as the date comes closer to the surgery that I am thinking about myself. Who am I? Am I an angry person? or am I too calm? Am I too emotional? or not enough? Do I rely on fantasies too much to keep myself going or am I so deeply rooted in present and pragmatism that I work too hard and have forgotten how to live... The answers? All of the above? So, yeah, I have been going through it.**

**But, it wasn't until I sat down when life forcibly put a pause on my present that I took a moment to think about myself and realize these things. So, it's unfair for you to put pressure on yourself like that. To expect to know a man who didn't even know himself. Because the reality is, baby, that I didn't even realize how I internalized "the more you laugh right now, the harder you'll cry later" until I wrote it right now.**

**Yeah.**

**To be honest, I am freaking out a little? Did I figure out the cause of everything wrong with me? This is it. This is it! This is the problem. I just have to unlearn this and maybe my baseline for emotions will readjust to something that's not sadness because I am so tired of constantly living with a heavy heart, looking to apathy to survive.**

**I want to feel without drowning.**

**Maybe after the surgery, I'll work on this. Maybe I'll take a break. Maybe we could take a break together? But...if you are reading this... then. Sorry for rambling again. I am very out of sorts right now. I'll do better in the next one!**

**In my next email, I am going to talk about you. I promise! Because at the moment, I don't like myself all that much but I always, always like you. Even when you annoy me, I like you. Although, I do wish that you'll pinch me less. But I also like grabbing your hands and punishing you. (You just turned and threw your leg on mine, I love you, do you know that?)**

**When I thought about what I wanted with these emails, I decided on telling you things about myself that you never knew because that's all I can give you now. Memories. That’s the only role that I feel comfortable with as a dead man, I will not dare to assume otherwise. So take my memories, and do as you will with them. But whichever way you go, it's the right one. Okay? So don't you ever EVER feel guilty. Okay, baby?**

**Here's another thing that you don't know about me and that I wanted to tell you so much.**

**On that day, on the terrace, when we confessed and kissed for the first time? I had no intention of agreeing to a relationship.**

**An hour before it happened, I remember telling Hyungwon that if you tried to confess, I am going to run away because it was too late now. “We messed up the timing. We are never going to be together now,” I had said.**

**But, then in a stupid game of spin-the-bottle, you looked at me the way you do, and mesmerized, I looked back at you, unable to look away, gripped by the raw intensity of you. Still mesmerized, you led me away, I was only moving but it was actually you leading me to that little corner behind the tanks.**

**I am so glad that you did because then I kissed you. I’ve never wanted to kiss someone like that before. I still haven’t kissed anyone the way I always kiss you. So whole and so passionately because I kind of always want to suck out your soul and own every bit of it every time. And, I knew that whatever we had? It was so much more than some silly high school infatuation. I knew that our story was going to span years and so many different emotions and if I wanted to experience a love like that, I had to keep you to myself then and there.**

**That was my most selfish moment.**

**I have never wanted to have something so much to myself and only myself the way I wanted you on that terrace. You think that my stubbornness got us together but it was your intensity, the way you love, the way you look at people that you love that made it happen. I want you to know that. I did nothing. It was all you.**

**I don't know how to explain it further, but do you get it?**

**At that moment, Hoseok was a passerby. Insignificant. But, you looked at me like I was the best thing that happened to you, like I mattered, like I was something precious, something to be cherished and I had never felt like that before.**

**Nobody looked at me like that. I was too used to slipping between the cracks but then I decided to throw my body at you and you decided that stupid ol' me mattered. And that feeling? That's something that keeps me going. Do you know that? My self-worth is made of you and it might be fucked up but here it is. I want you to know this. I grew into what I grew into because of you. I don't think that I would have dared to make something out of my life if it wasn't for you loving me like I had worth. And, I realized that when you looked at me, kissed me, held me on that terrace for the first time.**

**Here's another thing that I want you to know:**

**When we took a break (that's both the breaks combined, to be clear), I had sex with 14 people. Fell madly in love with two. And, in that duration, every day, I drew a whale because I missed you so much. Because more than my love for those two, I felt my loss for you. And, I should have tried to move on, but I didn't want to.**

**I know that in most cases 'break' means break up. Call me naive or whatever but I knew that in our case, it was just going to be a break. I knew that. I know that.**

**Whatever happens, you and I? We come in a pair. Whatever happens, even if we break up permanently, we'll both continue to be in each other's lives in the most significant role. Be that lover or best friend. You and I? We aren't soulmates. We are more. We weren't made for each other. We bumped into one another and then we grew around each other.**

**Do you get it? We aren't only made for each other but we are also made of one another and that means so much more.**

**That's something unnatural.**

**That's something that we made happen.**

**That's so human in the most stubborn way.**

**We loved each other and we willed everything accordingly. I am getting sappy but you turned around and now have decided to put both of your legs on my legs and your head on my crotch. You are so lovely, and so horny even while asleep. I like you so much!**

**I can't resist anymore so I am going to take your head and put it on my arm and just wrap you all around me and breathe you in.**

**So, finally, here's this week's Hoseok-is-dead-and-a-dictator wish:**

**Last week, I chose 45 of those whales and put them in Kihyun's parent's house for safekeeping. If I come out alive, then my plan is to give you one for every anniversary till we turn 60, because I am assuming after that we'll just be some chips in an android.**

**But, I am dead (spoiler alert?), so change of plans.**

**Go to Kihyun's parent's house, get those sketches, and choose one for your tattoo (I knew you wanted to sketch me one for you) if you still want it. Otherwise, like me and my memories, you own them now, so do what you will with them. I don't mind.**

**Oh, also, can you go in our corner for me?**

**In life and death, I love you.**

**Yours,**

**Hoseok**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Sage for some very important conversations which essentially revived this mostly abandoned fic, for editing this, and for just being a lovely person in general. 
> 
> As you might notice, this is part one, and I will update the second part soon (this week or next week, for sure!)
> 
> Press a like, share, subscribe and/or tell me your fav part/line/dialogues or anything in the comments below, it will be realllllllyyyyyyyy appreciated :) 
> 
> If you are inclined: 
> 
> [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/MellowMinhyuk)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/crankyminwon)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


	3. Terraces and Camellias - Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Death, Implied Depression, References to suicidal thoughts.
> 
> Please, please, take care of yourself.

The last time Minhyuk was at Kihyun's house was a year ago at Hoseok's funeral.

Standing at the doorstep, feeling cold from the memories even as he wipes the sweat from his brow, Minhyuk thinks that he is being played. It's an irrational thought at best and delusional at worst, but Minhyuk can't help but feel like Hoseok predicted and plotted everything.

It's delusional because there's no way that Hoseok, a year ago, could have predicted that Minhyuk would lose contact with everyone who isn’t his employee and hatched this plan, while cackling maliciously, to get them back together.

Minhyuk read the email, it was so unfiltered and unplanned, almost all over the place, he could tell that Hoseok went over it again but even then the thoughts were in it raw and unprocessed.

And, yet, beyond the cloud of irrationality and delusion, this is such a Hoseok thing to do that Minhyuk knows in his bones that this is deliberate. He wants to flee away, if only to strip Hoseok of the satisfaction.

But, he doesn't.

He is desperate enough that he didn’t even wait an hour for Hyunwoo to come and take over.

He had tried. He really did.

Knees pressed against his chest, and head hanging, while sitting on the bathroom floor, he had begged himself to at least wait. To resist. To show himself that he had at least one ounce of self-preservation in him, that he cared more about himself than a dead man.

He needed a day or a century without any movement. Was it that much to ask and to give? He was still shaky from all the realizations. Didn’t he deserve to shroud himself in a moment of hopelessness without having to get up with disappointment all over again? He just needed isolation, some space, and no people or words, to gather himself and process everything.

And instead of giving himself what he needed, he forced himself into stoicism. To put the processing on halt and instead seek some stability in that pause. Stoicism not for relief but for action. So, he forbade himself to think about anything in the email other than the part where Hoseok told him about the whales.

After that, the want took over.

The want to have those sketches is the same as the one that made him search every inch of Hoseok’s room, a year ago, to find the letters that he wrote to Minhyuk throughout the years.

He didn’t find them. Of course, he didn’t. He wouldn’t be surprised if Hoseok burned them right after Minhyuk returned them.

If nothing, that’s the part of him that Minhyuk knows.

Minhyuk inhales a shaky breath, the chill grips his lungs but insulated by his desperation, he shakes his fear away and rings the doorbell.

Kihyun’s mother opens the door and her eyes widen in such genuine surprise that it makes Minhyuk smile, so he grins and easily lets himself be pulled into a tight embrace. The motherly warmth that he had denied himself for so long seeps through him easily and he reciprocates by holding her back.

I should visit mum and dad, he thinks, as she starts patting his back.

Letting go, she puts him at an arm’s distance, inspecting his every limb like she can see each centimeter that he has lost and is ready to wage a war about it.

"You look great," she lies through her teeth, the constrained furrow of her brow, and the wrinkles in her forehead screaming contrary.

Minhyuk lets it be. "Yeah? Thanks. Got a haircut just to remind you of my handsomeness."

Minhyuk lies in return as his fringe covers his eyes again.

She shakes her head, amused at his pathetic attempt at small talk. "You are always handsome."

He leans down to meet her eyes and scrunches his nose. "More handsome than Kihyun?"

She laughs, the sound musical and so joyful. That’s something Kihyun inherited from her.

Suddenly, her face turns serious as she holds his face in her callused hands. The roughness of her hands juxtaposed to the gentleness of her hold makes him look at her with wide eyes. Her glinting eyes speak of raw empathy and Minhyuk is forced to remember that he wasn't the only one who lost Hoseok.

Instead of feeling better, he feels bitter, something vile and possessive curls inside his chest and he closes his eyes, afraid that she'll see it through him and figure out how much of a bad person he is.

But, he can't help it. He can't help how singular he feels in his sadness and loss, and how terribly he wants to cherish that.

No one knew Hoseok as he did, no one touched him as he did, no one breathed him as he did, no one fought with him as he did, and no one loved him as he did.

So, when people at the funeral held his hands and looked at his face while he let his limp palms lie in theirs, eyes stuck on the floor because playing the part of the perfect widower consumed by sadness rather than the pathetic, jilted boyfriend who was more angry than sad was so much easier.

He was so furious at the time. He was angry at Hoseok, angry at himself, angry at the people there who kept looking at his face like they wanted to get confirmation of the authenticity of his sadness and kept holding his hands like they understood the sheer scale of his pain.

They didn't.

They never can.

And now, a year later, Minhyuk feels possessive of that isolation.

While in the beginning, his heart ached for someone to understand him, now he wants to be away from the people who feel even a touch of the pain that Minhyuk does.

So, maybe a year back, this same embrace by Kihyun’s mom who personifies that empathy would have made him feel better, now, consumed by the messiness of his feelings - the ones that tell him that everyone is moving on even though they suffered the same loss as him - all he feels is awareness of his own weakness.

He just wants to be alone, really.

***

Minhyuk is sitting on the couch, drinking tea with Kihyun's mom, willing the universe to wrap, distort, glitch, implode, do anything but get him away from those understanding eyes.

They make small talk and Minhyuk feels like shutting down at every question because even though Kihyun's mom is well-intentioned, her every question feels designed to gut him.

She asks him how he is doing and he parrots back, "I am doing well, thank you. How are you?" While on the inside, his heart squeezes and sobs fat tears, feeling the kind of bruised rawness that he had worked so hard to separate himself from a few months ago, and again this evening after reading the email.

He was sure that his will to stay unresponsive and unfeeling was metal but now under benevolent questions like "How is the cafe doing?" and "Are you dating someone?" it melts.

Scorching. Hot. Hurtful.

He says "Yes", he says "No", but on the inside, he keeps screaming bloody murder.

This is why he needs away from Hoseok and his world. This is why he thinks that his reaction was anticipated, and this confrontation was planned by a dead, sadistic man..

Holding his wince as he inhales the piping hot tea, he carefully puts the empty cup back on the tray. While trying to not seem too eager to get away, he asks, "Hoseok had some sketches, and I think he left them here?" He doesn't add the thing about the emails. He feels pathetic enough as it is.

"Oh. I completely forgot about them! Of course! They are probably in Kihyun's room. I can't believe I forgot about them. I am so sorry!" She exclaims in surprise as if the realization just dawned on her.

Her regretful tone tells Minhyuk how important this discovery is for her. This realization should be delightful.

It isn't.

He hates everyone who misses Hoseok. As he said, he is possessive of his misery.

“Thanks. I will go and look for them.” He gets up and strides towards Kihyun's room.

Abrupt as his words and actions are, Kihyun’s mother doesn't stop or follow him. She lets the rogue river run wild as it wants, and for that, he is grateful.

***

When he opens the door, he expects to be greeted with emptiness, he was almost looking forward to it but, instead, he is welcomed by a wiggling pillow fort on top of the bed.

Upon hearing the creak of the door, the duvet is thrown away and two furrowed faces scorn his intrusion.

Kihyun's irritation melts into surprise, expression comically same to that of his mother's, while Hyungwon’s face recedes into the ever-present detached curiosity that he affects.

Kihyun crawls out of the blanket and Minhyuk braces himself for the physical harm on his person. Kihyun doesn't disappoint. He stomps towards him and softly hits his stomach with his knee. Minhyuk holds his stomach, whining in protest. This is practically a ritual after eight years of friendship.

Much like Hyungwon, Kihyun was Hoseok's childhood friend, and again much like Hyungwon, he came with Hoseok in his dowry. The one-third of the three musketeers. The bane of Minhyuk’s existence. The first close friend that he made.

Unlike Hyungwon, they never struggled. They pretended to be angels during their first meeting and after that, tried their best to outdo each other's devilry. With Kihyun, there was never any uncertainty. They were friends, pure and simple. The relationship was clear in their bickering and bites.

"I told you to call me last month. You forgot how phones work?" Kihyun says as he stares down at his curled form.

Minhyuk straightens up and raises a brow. Even guilty, he is not one to be outdone like this. "You forgot how hanging out works? You didn't think of telling me that you were here?"

Kihyun raises his palms in defense. "I just got here today. I would have texted you beforehand if I wasn't sure that you would run away. My plan was to corner you at your house."

"Well, that's a sucky plan. I simply would have not opened the door."

Kihyun looks at him in disbelief and raises his finger at him. "You! You didn't even try to deny it!"

Minhyuk shrugs lazily. "I am trying to change my ways by being honest with the people in my life."

Kihyun shakes his head with a laugh and wraps his arm around Minhyuk’s shoulders in the broest of bro hugs. "I missed you, man."

Minhyuk leans into him, turning it into the un-broest of bro hugs. "Yeah, me too. Me too."

When he lifts his head from Kihyun's shoulder, body hunched a little, he finds Hyungwon staring at them with a smile.

Feeling the warmth of Kihyun’s hold and Hyungwon’s gaze, Minhyuk shyly smiles back.

***

"Is this your podcast setup?" Minhyuk asks, lips twitching in amusement, as he stares at the pillow fort covered by a duvet.

Hyungwon looks up from his phone. "Yeah. The mikes and the whole set-up is inside. It's better sound quality this way."

Minhyuk grins. "Very professional." He sits down on the bed beside Hyungwon, bouncing a little on the unused new mattress.

Hyungwon ignores him and continues with his mindless scrolling. "And cost-effective."

Kihyun had gone into his house's attic – apparently, that's where Hoseok used to store his stuff.

Hoseok used to go back to his parent’s house in the countryside during the holidays, but it never entered Minhyuk’s mind that he must have needed a place to store his stuff. If he had known, he would have offered his own room, besides his own things.

Minhyuk and Hoseok. They come in a pair. Do not separate.

“Was Kihyun angry that I didn’t pick up his calls?”

He needs to try better.

When Jooheon had mentioned Kihyun, he should have thought about him first but he didn't. He just took his name for granted as you do for your long-time friends. He had thought that if Kihyun had come with Hyungwon, they'd end up meeting, if he didn’t, then, they’ll meet the next time when Kihyun comes anyway.

“He was worried. Not angry.” Hyungwon shrugs lazily.

Almost absent-mindedly, Minhyuk finds himself staring at Hyungwon while noting characteristics as if he is a narrator observing his protagonist.

_Pink hair, white tee, grey jeans, mellow eyes that almost always speak of amusement, button nose, plush lips, strong brows that are almost always furrowed, broad shoulders, spindly arms, long legs, lanky physique but deceptively strong, bony but soft. Sarcastic but caring. Deep voiced but words airy. Sweet. Sour. Kind but bitc-_

Hyungwon’s shoulders tense as if he can feel Minhyuk’s gaze on him, and before he can turn, Minhyuk looks away.

He is doing it again.

Instead of thinking about Kihyun, his thoughts are still stuck on Hyungwon.

When he should have been making plans to meet Kihyun, he was busy wondering why Hyungwon hadn't texted him. He didn’t realise this until Kihyun had pulled away from his hug and asked if he was there to meet him.

Minhyuk had pressed his lips, repressed his shame - because he hadn’t even thought of Kihyun for a second - and told him the real reason.

Kihyun hadn’t looked angry or disappointed even then. He hides his emotions too well.

It's a testament to Kihyun being a better friend than him that when Kihyun heard Hoseok’s name and then about Minhyuk’s quest, his first instinct was to protect him by turning away before Minhyuk could see a speck of pity, sympathy, empathy, anything that spoke of Hoseok's loss being universal rather than Minhyuk’s private possession.

“He’s a great friend,” Minhyuk says, more to himself.

Instead of confronting Minhyuk, Kihyun had silently mumbled that he knew where it could be and he'd get them, and then went to do so on too-strong steps. That’s how Kihyun dealt. He took over any work that would get him away from the solemn atmosphere and engage his mind in other things. He did it all while holding his back straight and face stern, projecting strength.

Hyungwon exhales loudly in amusement. “Eh. He’s okay, I guess.”

Minhyuk should have stopped Kihyun and held him. Asked him how he was doing, how he was coping but he couldn't. He doesn’t know how to.

Hoseok's loss isn't only his. No matter how hard he tries to put himself in that isolation, the loss can't be contained. So, there they all are, being haunted by the ghost of a friend, a son, and a lover.

“Is he doing okay?”

Different roles, different relationships, and different kinds of emotions but they all are suffering from the same kind of loss. A loss he hasn’t figured out how to deal with himself so how can he pretend to know when it comes to the others?

And, that's another reason why he wants this loss locked inside his heart - and only his heart.

“I don’t know. He never tells.” A pause. “You should try asking him.”

Minhyuk fidgets.

Trying asking him?

With what words and to what intent?

He can talk to himself, he can soothe himself, he can chide himself but he doesn't know how to console the others. No one has said the right words to him yet and when someone does, he promises to unlock his heart and share his grief because then he'll have something more to share than only sadness.

He needs a happy ending to narrate his sad story.

He is waiting for the words that will heal. Something more kind then "He is in a better place" or just _more_ than "I am sorry". When he has those words, he'll feel comfortable opening everyone’s wounds with his own grief. Otherwise, if he doesn't have the right means to cauterize those wounds, then what's the point of it all? Isn't it just selfishness then?

Minhyuk presses his lips and lets his mouth take over. The heart isn't shit. "You moving back?"

"Mmm-hmmm." Hyungwon's phone vibrates and he starts typing something quickly.

"You didn't tell me that the last time we met."

Hyungwon raises his shoulder in a half-shrug. "I wasn't planning to."

"Planning to tell me?"

Hyungwon looks up. "No, I wasn’t planning on moving back. I decided that after meeting you."

"Because of me? Oh, I am flattered."

"You’re a joker. Kihyun wanted to stay closer to his girlfriend. I didn’t want to go back and forth every week for the podcast, so I thought that I would move back here with him. Who cares."

Minhyuk pouts. “I care.”

Hyungwon looks up, eyes narrowed. “You do?”

"Yeah. I hate it. Go back. Do your podcast over the phone or something,” Minhyuk says, trying to keep a straight-face.

Hyungwon opens his mouth, eyebrow arched, lips almost lifted in a sneer, like he is going to deliver the sickest burn of all time when Kihyun comes through the door.

He gives them a faint smile summoned from the depths of his own pain and hands over a blue folder to Minhyuk who takes it with shaky hands and gets up from the bed, compelled to go to the terrace because he is a puppet with no agency of his own apparently. He looks at the plain unassuming blue folder and feels his knees buckling.

A hand reaches and gently grabs his arms and pulls him to sit on the bed again. Minhyuk takes deep breaths for a moment and feels the hand leave his arm. The loss is for a second only, as Hyungwon moves in closer and starts rubbing his back.

Kihyun gives him a glass of water. "You okay?"

Minhyuk nods. "Yeah." His hands tremble and the glass almost drops but Kihyun wraps his hands around his own. Minhyuk nods to himself shakily and takes another sip. "Yeah. I just need a moment."

He drinks the water in one go and grounds himself. It's just a folder, with just some sketches. It doesn't matter, Minhyuk tells himself.

Hyungwon pats his back twice and removes his hand. "Just sit here. We'll be in our office." He points at the pillow fort and Kihyun snorts. "So, you'll have your privacy."

Minhyuk shakes his head. He needs to see it on the terrace because that's what Hoseok would want him to do if he could write what he actually wanted Minhyuk to do. And even in his anger and defiance, he can't betray Hoseok like that.

"It's not about privacy. I need to go to the terrace and see these there."

"Why?" Kihyun asks curiously.

The answer is on the tip of Minhyuk's tongue but with the snap of his jaws, he bites the words back.

How do you begin to describe this?

How do you begin to describe this and not slap your friends in the face with the revelation that you have done nothing to move on? That you are still at the same place as the day after Hoseok's death, if not worse? How do you describe that you are running errands for your dead boyfriend and they mean so much to you? How do you tell your friends that and not sound pathetic? How do you tell them that their patience with him means nothing because he is not ready to move on?

He knows that he is pathetic and needs to get over himself but seeing that realization in his friend's faces is going to shatter him even more and he can't have that. Not now at his rawest, most vulnerable.

This fear of discovery and subsequent abandonment is the thorn against his naked skin, a little movement and he is going to bleed to death.

So, he shakes his head and smiles. "I want to see them there. Just to relive some memories, I guess. Why not? The weather is," He thinks of the hot heat outside and swallows his grimace, "nice?"

Behind him, Hyungwon laughs at his obvious lie.

Feeling insulted, Minhyuk can't help the petulant pout on his face. "Whatever. Let's go together."

A little company would be nice. It will stop him from crying. Maybe.

Kihyun gets on the bed and starts crawling towards their "office".

"Sure. We need to record this one last segment then we'll come with you. You can sit here," Kihyun pats the bed, “and see Hyungwon act like a complete idiot till then."

Minhyuk laughs. "Now, how can I resist that?"

***

Minhyuk lies on his back beside the pillow-fort and puts the folder beside him, resisting the temptation to see them then and there. He inhales deeply while relaxing his back, hands tucked neatly over his stomach, eyes closed, as he lets Hyungwon and Kihyun's voices wash over him.

"So today's listener's email, chosen by Hyungwon, is a problem.” Kihyun begins. “A very deep problem. The email says:

'Hey guys,

I have been listening to your podcast since last week and when I say listening, I mean, LISTENING. I have been binging it for the whole week and I've never felt more alive-’."

"Now see, that alone concerns me. This is the most alive you've felt? Two guys chatting shit interrupted by ads where they sell equipment for shaving balls?" Hyungwon interrupts, tone sardonic.

Kihyun laughs. "Shut up! 'I've never felt more alive. I am living, you guys. I even bought the books that you recommended!’."

"Damn, we are selling books here. We are getting people to read! But, nope, sponsors don't see that. The only ads that we get are about ball shaving equipment, pills for hair loss, and wine boxes."

"That one was pretty great actually. They sent us so much wine," Kihyun sighs happily.

"Yeah, that one was okay. But we need to aim higher."

"What might that be?"

"Oh, come one. Look at us, look at our content, look at our demographic. We deserve more!"

"YEAH!" Kihyun shouts.

“We are the number one podcast on this network. We should be getting 10 sponsors each week, at least.”

“YEAH!”

"If not that, then we need one big sponsor.”

“YEAH!”

“We need to get sponsored by Snake pills that guarantee a bigger dick!"

"YEA–Wait, what?!"

Minhyuk chokes on a laugh, covering his mouth to muffle his laughter.

"I said what I said. Snake pill people, if you are listening, I want you to know how you changed my life."

"Did you take snake pills, man?" Kihyun screams, voice shrill with surprise.

"Yes."

"Are you for real? Is this a bit?"

"No, this is real!"

"OH MY GOD. What happened?"

"So, I was around 14."

"NO!"

"Yes. I was around 14, and I got into this weird porn phase where I just watched a man's dick. Nothing else. I only stared at the man's dick. It was so fascinating to me. I wasn't turned on or anything. I was just fascinated. Anyway, all that dick data input made me conscious about my own and I looked up for ways to increase size. So, you know that weird mysterious shop near our school?"

"The one on the second left turn?"

Minhyuk knows that shop and- _Oh, no._

"Yes. I went there for shits and giggles one day, and then I saw these pills there that guaranteed a 'Big finish for your Mrs: Upgrade your penis now' and that was it. 14-year-old me was sold. I needed my penis upgraded."

Minhyuk turns on his side, one hand on his mouth and the other on his stomach, chest shaking with his muffled laughter.

"Hyungwon. Oh my god. No! No! NO! Did you take them?"

"Fuck yeah, I did. To this day, I don't know what was in those pills. I won't be surprised if it turns out that they had an actual snake’s bobs and bits in them because I had simultaneously the best and the worst trip of my life. I've tried so much stuff since then, and nothing has ever replicated the feeling that I had when I took those. I was seeing stuff in fucking 2D. My third eye had opened with a 20/20 vision. I think at one point, I actually looked into the future."

"Is it bad that I kinda want to try one now?"

"Are you seeing this, snake pill people? You can't get a better salesman than me," Even though Minhyuk can’t see him, he knows that Hyungwon’s chest is puffed.

"Were you lying?"

"No. This actually happened! I’m telling you. I want to take it again but I could never find one. I think the shop owner might have made it himself."

"Damn. The shop is no longer open. I think the owner died of old age, so I guess we'll never know."

"I don't know. With the kind of stuff that he had in that shop, I don't think he’s DIED died."

"You think he achieved enlightenment with his snake pills?"

"Pretty much. I think us talking about him might summon his spirit here, in fact."

"Okay. Stop talking. We are running out of time, anyway. I am going to have such a hard time editing this. Let's jump straight into the email.”

“Go ahead.”

Minhyuk puts his arm over his eyes, the threat of loud laughter abated, but he is still smiling.

“Okay. Here we go.

'I love how you guys balance each other. You have the perfect long-time friends dynamic. Teasing but caring. I also love both of your voices so much.' Oh, thank you."

"Glad to be of service," Hyungwon says, deepening his voice further.

"Stop that. I’m disgusted.

‘Here's my question. I broke up with my long-time boyfriend two months ago and I thought I'd move on easily because towards the end we were fighting so much but it's been a long time and I still miss him so much. I think that I am still in love with him but he’s moved on. I don't want him back per se, but I tried dating and all my dates turned out to be just meh or really awful. It's so hard to be back in the dating pool. My friend suggested that it might be because I’m still in love with my ex-boyfriend? We didn't end on bad terms, do you think I should try to get him back?’

That’s the first question, the second one, which Hyungwon asked to be read together-”

“I did. I am going to answer them together. This is the only time you’ll hear me actually care about the questions and answer them sincerely, so cherish this episode.”

“Alright! I am actually kind of excited to hear your sincerity myself.”

“Of course, you are. It’s rarer than a woolly mammoth.”

“Isn’t that extinct?”

“Your point being?”

Kihyun laughs. “Nothing. Here’s the question.

‘Hey, Hyungwon and Kihyun,

How are you guys doing?’ We are doing well, thank you.”

“Who is the ‘we’ here? Don’t speak for me. I have never done well in my life.”

“Uh-huh. That seems loaded. Not engaging that. So, the question.

‘I really enjoyed your ‘When is it okay to simp for Capitalism?’ episode. Very insightful.’”

“Yeah, that was a good one.”

“It does have our highest rating.

‘I have been in a slump recently, and I thought who better to seek advice from than the people who believe that bigfoot is real.’ Hell yeah, we do.”

“Believe in bigfoot? We WORSHIP bigfoot. Come to the light before it’s too late, skeptic.”

“Yup.

‘So, I got laid off recently, and I have received so many rejections - including getting rejected by a girl that I really liked - that I have lost the will to even get out of my bed. My physical health is deteriorating, I am almost out of savings, I really need to apply for jobs and get my shit together. I think it’s been a week since I even spoke a word. I don’t even want to leave my room, much less my apartment. I am eating one meal a day. Everything seems so exhausting. Any advice to get out of this slump?’ These are some hard hitters, Hyungwon.” Kihyun whistles. “Are you sure you can take them?”

“Well, I am not going to pick another question or record this whole thing again, so I am going to give my best.”

"I was actually kinda surprised that you picked the first question, usually, you avoid relationship questions."

"Yeah, I didn't see it as a relationship question but more like a ‘person’ question."

"Hmmm. So, what's your advice?"

"For the first one, my advice is to do everything, but not get back together."

Minhyuk inches closer to Hyungwon’s side, intrigued by the sternness of his tone.

"Wow. You didn't sugarcoat it at all! I think you've never sounded more sure of an answer."

“Yeah, okay, so, I was going to make notes for these answers but then I got lazy, so I am going to word-vomit now and I hope you glean something from it.”

“Very professional,” Kihyun says, half-laughing.

“I know. Don’t interrupt me today or I am going to lose my train of thought.”

“You seem extra serious, I will go ahead and even say ‘sincere’. Gasp. Who is he?”

“Kihyun…”

“Yeah. Yeah. I won’t. Go ahead.”

"Okay. For the person, who is considering getting back with their ex, I chose this question because I know this person. I was this person.

My version of this is that I liked someone for years and I liked them very much. I didn't pine or anything. I wasn't in a constant state of ‘likeness’, it was more like whenever I'd meet this person, I'd enjoy their company so much that my attraction towards them would just smack me in the face, but that's all.”

Minhyuk pouts.

_Who is this person and why don’t I know about them?_

“I didn't think it was something that was affecting me negatively, so I didn't seek any kind of closure nor did I try to actively distance myself from that feeling of attraction. I genuinely thought it was harmless and wasn't affecting my relationships or me in any way whatsoever.

And, that much was true, it wasn’t affecting my relationships or me directly.

It wasn't that I was dating a person and then I’d meet my...I guess, crush? God, this sounds so juvenile. Anyway, it wasn't like I'd meet my crush, and next day, dump the person that I was dating or I'd start pining and my partner would dump me. Or that I was sad because I couldn't be together with my crush. It was never like that. Instead, it was more indirect. More subconscious.

For instance, my dynamic, my relationship with my crush became something idealized in my mind. I stopped putting efforts into my romantic relationships thinking that a relationship should be about people fitting naturally like the way I fit naturally with my crush.

It shouldn't require effort, is what I thought.

This myth about natural soulmates dug its roots deep inside my mind without me realizing it. Then, when I broke up with my partners - each relationship starting passionately, and then fizzling out from my side - I never stopped to think about what I was doing wrong and boy, was I doing so many things wrong.

I wasn't reflecting on my own behavior in relationships because, in my mind, I already knew who my soulmate was and the excuse became, ‘Oh well, it's not my fault because this person is not my soulmate, so it doesn't matter if I put in the effort or not. It's already doomed.’

So, enjoy and move on, which I did. After enjoying the great days of every relationship, I broke up on the first bad day and moved on to the next person.

I think I broke so many hearts just because I was so far up my ass. Over time, this 'they aren't my soulmate' excuse became my crutch. I dated people, I didn't put in any effort, I broke up, I moved onto the next person. It made me a passive asshole.

I never gave any relationship a fair chance because, in my own way, I was indirectly filling in the time until I got together with my crush, my 'soulmate', this person who always left me feeling warm and in love, this person who in my mind would fit together naturally with me because we were meant to be and we'd never fight, and we'd be perfect together.

Do you get what I am saying?

More than an actual person, my crush became a myth. This idealized myth of perfection, and instead of pining after the person, I kept pining after the myth because it was easy to attribute failure to others and not myself.

This crutch kept me from looking at my own faults. It was always, ‘Oh, they are not the right person for me because I already know who my right person is’ and never ‘I am doing this wrong. I should do more gestures or I should be more verbal or I should be more physically affectionate. I should send them a sweet good night message because they like that.’

I didn't do this even when I wanted to because I was saving it all for my crush - I thought they were the only one who deserved it - and I never realized that.

I think at that point in my life, if I had gotten together with my crush, we would have crashed and burned because every relationship requires work - it’s just that in a successful relationship, you genuinely enjoy putting in that work - but, yeah, so I would have realized that ‘Shit, this needs work too’ and that whole eutopia of being in this perfect relationship with your perfect soulmate would have crashed down on me and them. Either I would have stubbornly refused to put in work or I would have put in work out of desperation because if you don’t succeed with your ‘soulmate’ then what chance do you have with anyone else?

The people that I dated deserved so much better, and I broke so many hearts because I would rather not acknowledge my failure as a person and a partner than actually reflect and put some effort into my own growth.

I’m not even sure if after the initial years, I even liked my crush. I think I fell in love with the myth instead.

All this is to say, I don't want you to get back together because you are doing the same thing.

You are not giving yourself and your dates a fair chance because, in your mind, you already have a backup. You already have your ex-boyfriend, so now you are looking for excuses to reject and sabotage your dates, not the other way around.

What's worse is, as you said, that you were fighting towards the end of your relationship, do you think you are pining after your ex-boyfriend or the mythical version of your ex-boyfriend? Since you are in a tough spot, out of your comfort zone, struggling, it’s easy for you to fall into good memories of your relationship and ex-boyfriend to seek comfort, and in that process, you are forgetting the other side - the bad side of your partner, and your relationship. Your mythical ex-boyfriend has become your crutch because you are afraid of the change and uncertainty.

Whenever you feel like that, remind yourself why you broke up in the first place.

These are the things I realized when a year ago, I lost a dear friend-”

Minhyuk, who had been listening intently, jerks back, the abrupt mention taking him by surprise.

“-and went on this whole bender and when I took a break, I sat and I thought about myself, the people around me, life, the world and that's when I realized these things. I asked myself why I let this behavior go on for years? Why did it take me so long to reflect on this?

The answer is comfort.

Now, I am moving to the next question, but for the first person, stay with me, there’s something in it for you too.

So, yeah, the thought that I had my soulmate already out there put me in a comfortable spot because it prevented me from putting any effort into my current relationships and myself.

It was almost addictive because...okay, so, I lied earlier, this whole pining - directly and indirectly - business did make me sad sometimes and I got addicted to that feeling. It made me feel special to think that my love was so long-lasting even though it was one-sided. It was almost masochistic the way that I handled that whole thing.

I think among all the emotions that we go through sadness can be the most addictive. Blue sticks on you. It's so easy to lie on your bed and ruminate. Exhausting but easy.

So, yeah, the second person who is in a slump. Tell me if you can relate.

Existing itself is exhausting when you are in a mental slump, so you don't get out of bed and don't exact your existence. This makes you even more sad which further exhausts you and then you are stuck in this vicious cycle of being exhausted because you are feeling low and feeling low because you are exhausted.

You stay passively complacent because it's easy to just let things go and not actively intervene, it's comfortable for your low-on-energy self.

Is that the case for you because that's what happened to me.

During my slump, I wouldn't shower and just lie down on my bed reading books. It was comfortable and easy. And we need those days, for sure, but the problem comes when we let it take over us. So, there I was not bathing for days, not going out, not exercising or even just moving, I just laid down on my bed, let that heavy, sinking feeling in my chest takeover and read books. Not thinking, not moving, nothing, just mindlessly reading words. Escaping instead of existing."

Minhyuk sits up, his shoulders tense, brows furrowed in surprise because…

_I didn’t know that._

He never got the idea that Hyungwon was suffering this much.

The thing is he never really thought how everyone else - including Hyungwon - took Hoseok’s death and how they were coping. He was too busy with his own struggles. And, now to hear all this...

“So that was my life for a while. I was financially well off which in a way added another element of compliance because I had no reason to get out. But, one day, I had a rude awakening. There were people in my life that I needed to take care of and one day, something happened that made me realize that I was slipping, that I needed to step up.

I had promised that I would take care of them, so I needed to fulfill that or at least, give it my best shot. But, for that, first, _I_ needed to get better. They deserved someone stable. Someone who wouldn’t add to their misery and that was my awakening.

I had a goal now. I told myself that I needed to take action. I had to force myself out of this complacency and inactivity.

There's a method out there for you, that you'll find with trial and error but something that'll work for you in some way.

For me, I forced myself to do certain things. I made myself shower every morning and night. I thought of at least one thing to do each day. 'Today, I am going hiking. Today, I am going to make an elaborate meal. Oh, I should join this pottery class. Oh, I should attend this workshop. Maybe I should check out this book club.'' It wasn't my natural inclination to do those things. My natural inclination was to lie on the bed and not move but I made myself do things and, gradually, I started enjoying some of them. I still do pottery, very badly, but I love it.

My steady progress kept me wanting more and more, to see more growth, and as I filled my schedule with things that made me feel accomplished, the things that were my natural inclination became rewards.

“I like these pots that I made, so I am going to lie down and enjoy this book.”

I made myself a bathing playlist before sleeping every night. I made my burnt meals. Got this second-hand projector to watch black and white movies on. I took pictures of my shitty misshapen pots and sent them to my friends.

I stopped searching for this internal, innate feeling of happiness. Instead, I started being present in the moments of small happiness and how they made me feel. My friends faking compliments and telling me that they wanted to buy my shitty pots and then backing off when I sent them the Paypal link, a small thing like that made me happy and in that moment, I let that feeling envelope me whole. Small things like buying a new bed sheet, exploring a new antique shop, going to the zoo, buying a vintage porn box-set and so on can make us happy or better too but the problem comes when we start looking at that joyful feeling as artificial because it's small and passing. I would encourage you to unlearn this tendency - especially in a slump - and view happiness as just that; happiness.

Once I figured this out, fuck did my life change. I felt like I got a cheat code or something.

This change or growth or appreciation - whatever you call it, will come with many trials and errors.

Take my example. In the beginning, I put these soulful songs in my shower playlist and I ended up sitting on the bathroom floor while crying.

I stopped putting a water bottle beside my bed with the intention that when I am thirsty, I'll get up and walk to my fridge. I thought it would make me move between long periods of inactivity, instead, it made me stay in my bed while dying of thirst.

I paid a 3-month membership fee for a gym, thinking that since I already spent the money, it will make me go but I still ended up not going. But then, I joined this local hockey team and that got me moving because it didn't feel like exercising, it felt like fun.

So, you'll have to figure it out but you need to actively intervene and tell yourself that, “Okay, I am getting out of bed and showering.” It will be forced in the beginning, but as you try different things, and remember to embrace small bits of joy that you feel during those, you’ll find your rhythm.

At least, that was my experience with my slump.

Mind you that I had my motivation, which was to get better to take care of the people that I promised to take care of. So, maybe, also look for motivation, and, yeah, surround yourself with people that will keep you going when you relapse and just have your back in general. Don't be afraid of relapses. I relapsed several times but I got back up. That's all you need to do. I know it's tough but you need to get back up.

So, to summarize, stop using idealized myths as your crutch, try to actively intervene instead of being compliant, stop differentiating between happiness.

To the first person, staying alone can be scary when you are used to being with someone but once you get going, you are going to enjoy that space so much. Use that space, use that time, and learn to enjoy things without a romantic partner. Spend time with yourself and your friends. Hook up. There’s no hurry to look for a romantic partner this instant. If you feel like you need to rush because your partner might completely move on, then even if you get back together, it’s going to be a one-sided relationship, no one is going to enjoy that.

And, to the second person, if I were you, I would downsize my costs, take a part-time job, and use that time to learn more about myself and explore things that I always wanted to but couldn’t because of my job. Look for the silver lining. Who knows you might even find a new more fulfilling career or just a feel-good hobby? Give it a chance.

Okay. My throat hurts, so that’s it.”

“....”

“Kihyun?”

"Oh, sorry. I got caught up in your words." Kihyun's words come out slowly as if he is still processing what Hyungwon said. "Yeah, so. Yeah. That was a long one. I think that was the most sincere answer that you have given in the history of this show."

"The second person, talk to a therapist. First person, stop looking outside to get dicked. Buy a dildo. Take charge!"

Kihyun snorts. "Ah. There's the Hyungwon that we know and mildly tolerate."

"What? I gave them a piece of practical advice!"

"Alright so-"

Minhyuk picks up the folder and leaves.

***

Minhyuk glances at the folder lying near his feet and then looks at the tall buildings straight ahead, his arms lying on the railing. He has been here for almost half-an-hour, and he has tried and tried but he can't even open the folder much less look inside even though he knows what's in there.

He is scared because he knows Hoseok. He knows that it's not all. There is something in there that is going to crack Minhyuk open and leave him spilling tears. He knows that, and he wants it regardless but God, is he scared.

So, instead, he is standing here, thinking about Hyungwon’s words earlier. Thinking about how he is so self-absorbed that he never asked after Hyungwon. Maybe it’s because Hyungwon always looks so put together, always so snarky, always joking around that Minhyuk forgot about the sensitive man below his intact facade.

In his defense, he is so full of his own hurt that there isn’t any room for anyone else’s there right now. Maybe, it’s one of his things where his brain is trying to protect him because he truly feels like if he took on any more pain - his or anyone else’s - he’d going to collapse.

Is that how he is going to live now?

Passive, ignorant, and uncaring.

He hates people who don’t care about others, he will hate himself forever if he becomes like them.

Then, there’s using your emotions as a crutch to avoid confronting reality and taking accountability, getting addicted to sadness, taking a passive role in your own life and so much more, all seemingly pointed towards him.

It feels like another planned attack either by the universe or by Hyungwon himself.

It’s all words - Hyungwon’s words - and thoughts, and conspiracies inside his head, and he doesn’t even know where to begin, which knot to pick and start unraveling from.

"Man, you’re not going to jump, are you?"

Minhyuk startles and finds Kihyun standing to his left, looking straight ahead, his arms lying on the railing like Minhyuk’s.

A hand touches his hair lightly and then loosely wraps around his shoulder. He knows it's Hyungwon without even looking. Who else has the habit of using him as his arm-place?

"If you jump, you'll die and make an ugly corpse."

Minhyuk rolls his eyes. "Ugly? Me? Are you sure that you are not talking about yourself?"

Hyungwon scoffs. "Look at me. I was born a pretty baby, and I am going to die a pretty corpse. I will be wrinkly as shit and even then, I'll be the most beautiful motherfucker in my old age home. They'll start a 100 plus beauty pageant because of me. You'll see."

Kihyun shakes his head. "The scary thing is, he is not joking. He actually means it. Man, humble yourself a little."

"Humility is for the ugly and incompetent, by which, I mean, it's for you."

"What about me? Is it for me?" Minhyuk interrupts with a soft smile, his tone teasing.

Hyungwon catches his eyes and stares into them for the first time in their conversation, and then slowly rakes it up and down his features. His stare is a little too serious, a little too long for a joke that it starts prickling at Minhyuk’s skin.

"...Nah."

Minhyuk scrunches his nose. "'Nah, you are pretty' or 'Nah, you are ugly'."

Hyungwon scrunches his nose back, imitating Minhyuk. "Just ‘Nah’."

The way Hyungwon continues staring at him makes Minhyuk want to say something to make him look away, but before he can, Kihyun thumps his back and dislodges his thoughts.

"Want to open that folder with us, you emo man?" Kihyun asks.

He wants to say no, but the uncharacteristic way that Kihyun invited himself into this knowing that this is going to turn teary, tells Minhyuk that either Kihyun needs this or he is looking out for Minhyuk.

Either way, he is going to try even if it blows up in his face and he is left crashing after this. He doesn’t want to repeat his mistakes with Hoseok and Hyungwon, so maybe, it’s okay to try?

He wants to be a person who people can share things with, not only their happiness but also their pain. That’s what he wanted from and for Hoseok. So, maybe, it’s time to get started on that even if he feels that he is reeling himself. They’ll cry together if it comes to that.

They sit down on the mat together, some snacks and soft-drinks between them, it’s almost like a picnic but with significantly more potential for tears.

Hyungwon opens a packet and offers it to Minhyuk who shakes his head and opens the folder in one go without any warning even to himself, eyes closing on their own.

Besides him, he feels Hyungwon taking out something from the folder, hands brushing against Minhyuk’s which are still holding onto the folder.

Kihyun’s gasp is loud but Minhyuk keeps his eyes closed.

"It's beautiful." Hyungwon whispers, a touch of awe underlining his words.

Curiosity overtakes his fear and he opens his eyes.

His gasp is as loud as Kihyun’s, and before Minhyuk knows he is holding the sheet in front of him, eyes prickling.

_Here we go._

The painting is simple. A big whale drawn in its simplest form, instead of grey or blue, it's painted in faint shades of purple, lavender, and periwinkle against the white of the paper, strokes deliberately rough. It's fairytale, whimsical, quaint, _beautiful_. It's everything that he remembers telling Hoseok about his obsession with whales.

But, this isn't the only thing that's making his throat tighten. Stapled on the left corner is a polaroid of Minhyuk making a stupid v sign, face drowning in purple lights.

He remembers the specific day in that specific club.

He remembers being 18, and in high-school; lying to his parents about having a sleepover at his new friend, Jooheon’s place, and then pestering Hoseok to take him to a club instead.

He remembers drinking, he remembers grinding on Hoseok and Hoseok laughing nervously, he remembers puking in that god-awful restroom, he remembers Hoseok rubbing his back and giving him water, he remembers passing out on Hoseok's shoulder and he remembers waking up in Hoseok's dorm, his arms spooning Hoseok who had a habit of curling into himself while sleeping.

But somewhere before, after and in-between these moments, he remembers posing for this photo as Hoseok grinned at him. That's how he knows that this is a planned attack. Hoseok took this photo with his shitty ridiculous pink slider phone, not a Polaroid camera.

Minhyuk picks up the next drawing while Kihyun and Hyungwon go through the stack on their own.

In this one, the big whale is scaled down, even smaller than his thumb, and painted in almost translucent shades of teal with a thick black outline. The Polaroid stapled has a baby Minhyuk sitting on the floor of his college dorm between Kihyun and Hyungwon, wearing a teal shirt and black jeans. All three of them are holding a red bull while surrounded by empty cardboard boxes; Kihyun and Hyungwon have their arm around his shoulders while Minhyuk is squishing his cheeks with his own hands, looking up at Hoseok, the cameraman.

He looks ridiculous and yet Hoseok saw something in it. Something in it to keep it saved throughout the years, and make paintings out of the colors in it and then print it out as a Polaroid and put it in this folder.

He survives five more with silent cries before he scoots back and brings his knees to his chest, face on the bridge of his arms, trying to muffle his cries.

He is snotty, teary, ugly, and yet he can't stop sobbing, seeking some kind of outlet for the pain piercing through his chest.

Instead of feeling relief, the pain keeps building up as the memories flash behind his eyes and he drowns in them, not with fondness like before but with pain, regret. He is going to cry himself to suffocation and wouldn't it be a treat to die of your own hands but with none the guilt, none the blame, none the regret.

A familiar hand with its familiar gentle tugging drags Minhyuk’s form towards himself. Minhyuk grabs Hyungwon's shirt in his hands, and curls himself into something smaller and insignificant, as though if he becomes of less matter, he’ll become of less hurt. It doesn't work as his tears keep on falling onto Hyungwon's shirt where his face is pressed against his shoulder.

"Min-"

Kihyun begins, Minhyuk feels Hyungwon shake his head, and Kihyun stops.

And, it's just that.

This is the indefinability of their relationship that he keeps trying to define. Minhyuk doesn't know how but Hyungwon knows him so well, sometimes even better than Kihyun, Jooheon, and Changkyun.

Beneath him, Hyungwon’s chest rises and then falls back suddenly, a choked cry reaches his ears and Minhyuk realizes that Hyungwon is crying too.

This is the indefinability of their relationship, he doesn't know why but Hyungwon's pain doesn't irk or hurt him like the others'.

He closes his eyes and wraps his arms around Hyungwon while Kihyun wraps his arms around Minhyuk, and they stay there, seemingly for an infinity of moments, all of them crying, breathing in-between sobs.

That's the thing about losing people, isn't it? People say it gets better with time. Minhyuk doesn't think it does.

Pain doesn't age, people's hearts do. Your skin thickens as you survive. So, the pain is always there in the folds of your thick and wrinkled skin, and it doesn't matter whenever you touch a painful memory, it aches all the same.

How do you begin to describe this?

It's like reminiscing about the significant memories of your childhood, the ones that you can remember vividly.

The ones that transport you.

For Minhyuk, it’s being ten and learning how to ride a bike.

Among all the insignificant successes and failures of that time, he remembers this one particular memory, this one time when early in his bike-riding lessons, for the first time, he rode uninterrupted without assistance and he flew. He _flew_.

He vividly remembers his emotions, the sky on that day, and the naked earth beneath his wheels. It’s almost magical the way he can recall these details, the details that matter.

In that moment, he had snickered and he had giggled as he had gone round and round in circles, in that big empty plot where children of his neighborhood used to gather and play, carving the mark of his success on earth with his wheels.

He had kept moving where the wheels took him, mostly in circles, inept at controlling the motion just yet, because he knew that if he exerted some force, this stroke of luck that’s pushing his bicycle would flee.

He is thinking of that, and then he is there, he isn't watching the ten-year-old him riding around in circles, he _is_ that ten-year-old. He knows that because he can feel those feelings in his chest.

So, there he is: riding. A few children playing a little far away from him. Only a few because it's thundering, the grey clouds traveling over him, looking for just the spot to announce their supremacy, but he doesn’t care because he has spent days in fear, days handling the trembling handle, days struggling against the peddle, days putting his foot down and seeking balance after traveling the tiniest of distance, but it’s all been worth it because now he can fly, now he has tapped into that feeling, that heady rush and it’s so addictive, it transcends things like self-preservation, ask any kid.

Thin droplets of rain start falling in warning of his defiance but he can’t stop, so he wears his defiance even prouder and starts pedaling faster. He is flying even faster, _higher_ , until suddenly, the handles followed by the wheels become shaky - the earth beneath him has had enough of his childish follies, so it trips him, the bike skids and he goes flying forward, somersaulting to his landing.

Everyone sees him and laughs a little but he just lies there, skinny limbs akimbo because he just flew.

He just flew!

His heart is beating fast but it's not fear, it's still the rush of everything – of flying, of tripping, of falling, of rolling, of landing. It's all of these feelings and more. It's the realization that the fall that he had feared so much, that had made him clutch the breaks every five seconds, was a beast of his own imagination and it didn't hurt as he thought it would.

And, he feels all these feelings and realizations because he is not remembering, no, some memories are too important, too deep for that.

Think of your significant childhood memory or just an important memory of the past. What’s your bike-riding-flying-tripping moment? Take a breath. Give up trying to imagine Minhyuk’s pain for a moment. Lie back and think of it. Take a moment. Take your time. Are you thinking? Aren’t the flashes of that memory a little too vivid? Isn’t there something inside your chest? Almost like you are time-traveling to the past in flashes? Like you are being transported?

That’s Minhyuk’s relationship with pain.

Do you get it now?

Some memories transport and if you don't stop yourself then you _feel,_ and that's pain for Minhyuk. That's hurt. That's loss. That’s death. That’s Hoseok for Minhyuk now.

That pain - like your significant memories - will age with you, and even if your “forget” it, some random day something will trigger you and if you let yourself, it will transport you, sometimes even when you stop yourself, even then it will dig its claws in your flesh and drop you into this neon, burning-flesh, sour, scaly hell of senses where you'll feel it all. Maybe it will reduce in intensity - Minhyuk can’t tell right now - but it will be there, that much he knows.

There's no riddance now.

It's as much part of you as the bone that you fractured which now hurts in winters or whenever you think of it.

Some people process this pain or loss and learn to live with it, some people repress it and fight against living with it, but in every case ever if you've felt pain, pain that has pierced through your heart and changed your life in the ways that you never wanted, then it's a part of you. For better or for worse.

You will recall it, you will relive it, there's no erasing it.

There's no one who can promise you - promise that actually means something - that it will get better with time because even at your strongest, there would be something, some smell, some color, some word, some date, some incident that will transport and kick you and punch you until you bleed. Then, because so much time has passed, and _ugh, you need to move on already,_ you would be expected to get up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and move on just to be kicked down again by some random smell, color, date- _whatever_.

Pain is an unrepentant bully like that.

"You lied to me. It doesn't get better. You don't know that. Your promise was a lie. You lied. I told you not to lie. You lied." Minhyuk repeats into Hyungwon's shirt, not accusing, just stating.

Hyungwon pauses before dropping his lips on Minhyuk’s head. "Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know that,” he says against Minhyuk’s hair, without any protest.

As Hyungwon's hold continues tightening around him like he doesn't know what else to do to let out his own pain, Minhyuk realizes that Hyungwon wasn't lying to him. He was lying to himself. It wasn't a reassurance for only Minhyuk but also for Hyungwon. For Kihyun. For Kihyun’s mom. For Hoseok’s parents. For Jooheon. For everyone who was close with Hoseok. He wasn't lying. He was wishing.

"It will get better," Kihyun says through his tears, patting Minhyuk’s back.

Minhyuk nods because Hoseok's death has taken a lot out of all three of them but it will not take their wishes from them. And, in the flawed glory of their humanity, even if they know better, they are still going to wish.

"If someone asks, then all three of us cried because Hoseok is a shitty artist. Kihyun, quick, draw some whales, so we can show some proof," Hyungwon says, his voice nasally from crying, the snark so evidently fake.

He feels Kihyun sighing behind him and Minhyuk can't help but laugh.

***

After their crying session, Minhyuk had invited Kihyun’s mom up - as much as he wishes, Hoseok isn’t only his - and together with Kihyun and Hyungwon, she goes through the sketches while Minhyuk has his back to them, earphones blocking out their words, sipping on coke, his newfound courage lost already.

Afterward, sensing his embarrassment, Hyungwon had asked Minhyuk if he wanted him to drop him home, and wanting to get out of there - of the tense atmosphere of naked hurt and loss that is still clinging around them - Minhyuk agrees.

He looks at the folder, close and sealed again, and he wants to swallow it and absorb it into his being but simultaneously, he wants to burn it and throw the ashes in the river because if some of them did that, then Minhyuk doesn't know what kind of power the whole package has.

He can’t do either, so he picks it up from the mat and stands. Kihyun’s mom starts rolling the mat and Hyungwon says something to Kihyun but Minhyuk doesn't listen because his eyes go to the two large black tanks and before he knows he is walking to their corner, to the place where everything really started, to the place where Minhyuk didn't realize that more than his confession, it was the way that he looked at Hoseok that got them together.

He steps in there, and contrary to his expectations, the air there is uncharged, an empty utensil, waiting for him to spill his own memories in it.

And he does.

His forehead falls easily on the wall against which he kissed and held Hoseok. Besides his head, he sees something carved in the wall, something that he had never seen before.

_Hoseok..._

Minhyuk runs his fingers against it, feeling the indent. He falls back on his strategy, his face stoic, heart empty of anything because this is the only way he can look at this.

The crude one-line carving of the whale is embarrassingly familiar and so are the words "Wonhyuk" written in a childish cloud.

_Oh, do fuck off. Ugh._

In their first year of dating, Minhyuk had given Hoseok a small notebook full of romantic poems and small doodles thinking that he did something. He was so embarrassingly proud of it that he completely forgot about the different combinations of both of their names written on the back of the last page.

He was such a teenage cliche but at the time, Hoseok looked so touched that he sent him a message upon message, telling him his favorite lines and then sent the picture of the last page with so many hearts that all Minhyuk felt was love.

Hoseok always took so much pride in Minhyuk and that's another thing that he loved about Hoseok.

And, even though he should be embarrassed to see the worst of throwbacks of his teenage sappiness, he just feels the love, the longing, the ache.

He leans his head beside the carving and just breathes. Focusing on the sound of his breath and nothing else. Trying to desperately keep his mind empty while holding back the tears because he is so tired of crying, of feeling.

Is this how Hoseok felt?

Perhaps, sketches and polaroids aren’t the only thing that he is inheriting from Hoseok.

"Minhyuk?" Hyungwon shouts, from the other side of the tanks, out of his sight.

Minhyuk breathes deeper and feels it filling his lungs while stabling his scratchy throat. Even worse than being weak is showing it. He has done it already. He got the pity, empathy, whatever it was that made the other two cry as well. He wants to keep that moment as just that. It will break his heart to have it overwritten with some awkward consoling.

"Yeah?"

"You've been there for a while."

"Yeah."

"What are you...doing?"

Minhyuk leans back and touches the carving again. "Peeing."

"Really? Can I join you?"

Minhyuk sighs. "No, you weirdo."

"Weirdo? I am not the one pissing on a terrace in daylight.”

"Go away."

"Fine. Meet me in the car in five minutes. And, stop hydrating. You have been going at it for a long time. You need less water."

Minhyuk huffs a silent laugh. "Yeah. Yeah. Go away."

***

Their ride is silent. Instead of Hyungwon's deep voice, the silence is filled with some low mindless beats. No words spared even in music.

Minhyuk feels awkward. Maybe it's because of the group crying session earlier or maybe it's because something subtle has changed in Hyungwon's demeanor as soon as Minhyuk entered the car, but he feels awkward.

Minhyuk would have called him out but he is not even sure if this silence is deliberate or subconscious. After all, Hyungwon is not a talkative guy in the conventional sense of the word. For every time that Hyungwon talks and snarks, Minhyuk can recall just as many - if not more - moments where he would lean his head back and just listen.

Hyungwon is the most silently considerate person that Minhyuk has met. His consideration is so subtle that it's easy to miss if you live a life full of distractions. It's silent, subtle, almost instinctive. It's the way he'll listen to you even when the whole group around you isn't. It's the way he'll become chatty when he thinks you need a distraction. It’s the way he’ll smile at you easily, so free with sharing his joy. It's the way he'll crack a joke for you even when he himself is hurting. It's the way he'll let the silence linger only when he knows that you can take it.

Hyungwon must have read him wrong because silence is the last thing that he wants right now. It's not comforting. It's predatory if anything.

Minhyuk runs his fingers on the seat-belt. "What's this playlist called?"

Hyungwon shrugs. "I don't know. Some dumb Spotify playlist."

Wow. Talk about giving some rope.

"It's...sexy," Minhyuk lies, he hasn't heard a single beat for the past five minutes.

Hyungwon chuckles. "Yeah? I'll let the nice people at Spotify know that my friend wants to fuck their playlist."

Minhyuk slumps in his seat. "I don't want to fuck anyone."

Hyungwon widens his eyes with exaggerated worry. "Oh my. Now, whatever shall I tell the expectant people that I invited to my orgy? I told them that you were a special guest."

Minhyuk turns his head and looks out of the window. Thinking about it now, the silence was great.

Hyungwon stops at the traffic light and turns in his seat. "Why are you pouting? Is joking about you joining an orgy off-limits?"

Minhyuk sucks his lips in, not willing to give Hyungwon the satisfaction of seeing him pouting. "Whatever. I don't care. It's a free country with free speech. Say what you want."

Hyungwon stares at him for a moment, no remorse but only amusement.

The light turns yellow. Hyungwon stretches his hand and pokes him in the cheek. The light turns green. Minhyuk swats his hand away but a lightness builds up inside his chest and he hides his smile. He surreptitiously glances at Hyungwon and finds him looking straight ahead, driving with a soft smile.

Minhyuk turns back again and puts a hand in front of his mouth, casually trying to hide his grin.

This push and pull of theirs, it's so juvenile. That's another thing about his relationship with Hyungwon. They bicker, they fight each other with utensils, they tease each other so much and it's always so fun. So childishly gleeful. It always fills his chest with so much lightness, that as much as he tries to keep a straight face, he can't help but giggle.

The closest feeling that he can associate it to is his relationship with his crushes when he was 10 or 12 or whatever age when he was too young to understand the complexities of love and relationships and called every passing infatuation “love”.

The joy that Hyungwon sometimes evokes in Minhyuk is similar to the giddiness that he felt when he tried to provoke fights with his crushes, just so they'd talk to him. It's the same kind of childish infatuated glee.

Except, Hyungwon and his relationship is deeper than teasing.

Or maybe it's wishful thinking on Minhyuk's part. Maybe, Minhyuk just wants to fill the hole where Hoseok used to be. Because that's how his relationship with Hoseok was, equal parts teasing and equal parts loving. They were infatuated while being in love. The switch from shallow flirting to deep loving was so effortless with Hoseok, and that's why even with their breaks, they lasted so long.

That's why Minhyuk got exactly what Hoseok meant when he said that he fell in love with two people, and yet he knew that Minhyuk was his forever. Many relationships fizzle out due to staleness, but Hoseok and he never had that. They dated for seven years and they never experienced that. Their relationship with all their bickering and neediness stayed new.

Hoseok might have fallen in love as you do with newness in other people, but even then he knew that feeling was transitory, not sustainable, unlike what they had.

It’s scary how exactly he gets that.

Minhyuk doesn't know if they would have taken more breaks in the future or even have broken up permanently, but he knows that whatever would have happened they would have come back to each other.

Minhyuk knows that even if he could have managed to build up a relationship with someone else, he would have met Hoseok and Hoseok would have teased him and given him his stupid grin with his stupid thoughtful questions and all of Minhyuk's work would have come undone.

If you know, then you know.

Hyungwon implied that soulmates are a myth but Minhyuk met his in high-school and loved him dearly and got so much love back in return that he got used to it. So, this new reality is so unfamiliar and baffling without his other half, that this familiar burst of feeling that Hyungwon invokes in him leaves Minhyuk warm. So much warmer than when he had started his day.

He looks at the blue folder in his lap.

Is it selfish to want that warmth for a few hours more?

He'll go back home, reheat some rice and soup, and try not to get his tears in his food while looking through Hoseok's drawings and their memories.

God, is it selfish to not want to be so pathetic for a few hours more?

"Want to get some ice-cream?" Hyungwon asks like he read Minhyuk’s mind.

Minhyuk nods before his brain can compute the pros and cons, the guilt, the joy. Riding on that impulsivity, he adds, "Actually, do you know that big park in sector 14?"

"Yeah. It's half-an-hour away."

"Can we go there?" Minhyuk says, voice small because the guilt wants to claw out of his throat and forcibly take his words back.

Hyungwon shrugs. "Why not?"

***

Minhyuk's head is tilted back, neck strained, as he stares at the evening sky through the leaves, absentmindedly kneading his left knee, legs crossed on the bench.

When he was in high school, he used to come to this park at least once every week.

It was their park. The mid-point to Minhyuk's school and Hoseok's college. Hoseok was the one who showed it to him, and it became the place where they would hang out.

The first time they met here after Hoseok went to college, he felt so shy. Weeks of acting so bold in texts and on calls, and then he was sitting there on the exact same bench, head hanging low, Hoseok sitting beside him, feeling awkward due to Minhyuk’s sudden shyness.

Finally, in a bid to make him comfortable, Hoseok started asking him about school, of all things. That made Minhyuk laugh. They were both so awkward, both of them having left their smoothness in their texts. But, Hoseok's awkwardness endeared him so much that he raised his head and remarked that Hoseok sounded like his every relative ever. Hoseok laughed back and that broke the ice.

By the end of the evening, they were swinging their linked hands while going towards the subway station, Hoseok teasing him that he was so much better at Economics than Minhyuk which was such a daring lie that Minhyuk brought his economics test next weekend and relished in Hoseok flailing and stumbling through each problem. So many memories of-

Hyungwon pushes the cold cone against Minhyuk's cheek who flinches more from the suddenness than the cold, and snatches it away from Hyungwon's hands in irritation.

Hyungwon sits down beside him, chuckling. "Why are all the parking spots full here?"

Minhyuk shrugs, tearing the packaging. "It's a rich people district. Too many cars and too few people."

Hyungwon bites into his cone. "Ah! The full parking and the empty park is a metaphor."

“You think everything is a metaphor.”

Hyungwon looks at Minhyuk's cone expectantly and then juts out his lips slightly, eyes deliberately blinking slowly as if Minhyuk hasn’t seen him exploit this expression before.

As if Minhyuk hasn’t fallen for this face before.

Minhyuk sighs and offers him a bite.

Pouty lips part in a devious grin as Hyungwon puts his hands over Minhyuk's, gripping the cone and Minhyuk’s hands tightly in his own. Minhyuk knows that grin so well that he tries to pull back, but Hyungwon is faster as he leans down quickly and, in an impressive showcase of almost unhinging his jaw, takes a huge bite, and then another one while Minhyuk is left grunting and struggling, trying to tear the poor cone away from Hyungwon's hands.

At the end, it’s all up to Hyungwon who takes his time and after two more bites, lets Minhyuk pull back the cone, going back to his own with such an innocent look that Minhyuk almost doubts what he saw.

Minhyuk looks down at the huge dent in his cone and sighs. "Your soul is ugly."

Hyungwon starts cackling, predictably unrepentant. "Aww. Mean." He points at the huge bite in Minhyuk's cone. "That? That's a metaphor about capitalism."

Minhyuk shakes his head, slightly laughing. Hyungwon is ridiculous.

They eat their ice-cream in silence without any further incidents. Surrounded by the chill of the wind and the dusk of the approaching night, their arms pressed against each other, the silence is much more comforting than it was in the car.

"Let's lie down on the grass," Hyungwon says while wiping his hands with a tissue.

"Why?"

Hyungwon leans down, and looks at him with amusement. "Just because?"

Minhyuk looks back at him, sharp retort ready on his tongue when Hyungwon swings his thigh to the right playfully so that it touches Minhyuk’s and suddenly, he feels hyper-aware of their closeness.

Their arm and thigh pressed against each other, face so close that all Minhyuk has to do is lean down a little and...And, what?

Minhyuk gets up. The wind doing nothing to cool down the heat on his face.

He walks towards the circle in the middle of the park surrounded by big bushes, the perfect cover to hide lovers and smoking teenagers alike.

It's where Hoseok and he used to make out and grope each other. So fearless and daring in the newness of their love. Making out in alleys, under-construction houses, elevators, and so on. Sometimes, Minhyuk can't believe that they actually did that. Anyone could have come, once they had almost gotten caught in an alley giving each other sloppy handjobs, and yet whenever they hung out, there was always a hunt for any perceived secluded place where they could press their bodies together, the charge between them always so magnetic.

Among all the spots, this is the one that has seen the most of them. So many intimate memories. Minhyuk has no idea why he chose to come here.

He lies down on the grass and closes his eyes. A moment later, he feels Hyungwon lying down beside him. A distance of another body between them.

He doesn't know why he chose to escape Hoseok's memories in his room to only sit with Hoseok's memories in the park.

He turns his face to his left to look at Hyungwon and finds him looking at the now inky blue sky. He glances at Hyungwon's arm lying beside him before looking at his profile again.

"Your answer about getting addicted to sadness and using it as a crutch...Was that directed at me?"

"It was for everyone who resonated with it. It was for me. It was for Kihyun. And, if you feel like it was directed at you, maybe it was for you as well."

Hyungwon doesn't turn, doesn’t look at him even while answering his question. He always does this, when Minhyuk wants him to look at him - really _look_ at him - he never does.

Right now, surrounded by bushes and the darkness of the almost there night, Minyhyuk decides to take some cover in that invisibility and say what he wants to. It's related to him, to Hoseok, to Hyungwon, to Hyungwon's answer. It's related to the mess inside his head and Minhyuk knows that he'll lose the courage if he tried to untangle it all but he knows how to begin. He has had this conversation too many times inside his head in scattered pieces.

"I have been thinking about myself these days. My identity. Like, who am I as a person– Don't turn. If you look at me, I won't be able to talk–I don't have any answers about "Minhyuk" because whenever I think of me, I think of Hoseok and then I realize that there is no "me," it's all borrowed from Hoseok. I don't think that I even had a personality before I met him. It's like I was barely anything when I absorbed him. So, now it's all bits and pieces of Hoseok with a little varnish of me. Do you get it? And, Hoseok is dead, right? So, it's like I’m dead? Does that make sense?” Minhyuk fidgets with his fingers, trying to pull out something decipherable from the nonsensical mess inside his head. “What I mean is that I feel stagnant. That this is it. This is it. This is my life now. Because the person who made me grow by giving me his pieces is dead. So, I am stuck now with dead pieces and no growth. And, we all know that a person who doesn’t grow with time is as good as dead. I don't know how to cope with that. Do you have any answers for that?"

Hyungwon doesn’t turn, respecting Minhyuk’s wishes. There’s no doubt that he is stopping himself from staring at Minhyuk to pick up his facial expressions, and look beyond his soft tone and see the depth of his pain. This is exactly why Minhyuk chose to speak now.

Hyungwon's hand moves in search of something, but Minhyuk misses it, lost in Hyungwon’s soft expression. The warmth that touches him soon is a surprise but so welcomed as Hyungwon links their hands loosely.

"We all evolve because of each other, our surroundings, our community, our circumstances, so would you say that no one is themselves and everyone is made of borrowed pieces? Maybe, technically, yeah, but that's just living, isn't it?

We meet people, we go through changes and we grow. We take pieces from everyone and fit them in our puzzle. And that puzzle, as a whole, is us. You don't only have pieces of Hoseok. Your love for reading? You told me that your mom is a big reader and you inherited it from her, that piece is hers. Three years ago, I gave you and Hoseok an ugly handmade greeting card on your anniversary to mock you both and in some convoluted way, it inspired you to make handmade greeting cards for your friends for every occasion. I don't know how your mind works but that piece is mine, isn't it?

My answer for you is, I don't think it's healthy for you to think of yourself as hollow and filled with borrowed pieces. Instead, think of it in this way, you saw your mom enjoy reading, she showed you her piece. You took interest in reading and then carved your own piece. I gave you that ugly greeting card, again, I showed you my piece, you started making greeting cards because you are a bizarre, bizarre man and that became your piece, a piece that you carved out of yourself. Hoseok told you about his dream of owning a cafe, he showed you his piece, and it piqued your interest in owning a business, and you carved another piece out of yourself.

The way I see it, it’s all Minhyuk.

We are half something innate and half something that we carve out of ourselves as we live, but make no mistake those are your pieces. Others might have stimulated you, but no, those are your pieces. You own them. They are very much yours. When I see you, I don’t think Hoseok. I think lovely-annoying-caring-and-bad-at-making-greeting-cards Minhyuk."

The words wrap around him like a well-worn sweater, every yarn comfortable, every contour fitting, the warmth traveling from his chest, and reaching his toes.

The surety of Hyungwon's tone hangs in the air with his words, expanding until they reach the sky and become objective. Something beyond scrutiny and reproach of believability and veracity. Later, he can cut into them and point out to himself why Hyungwon is wrong but right now, with the warmth of Hyungwon's hand holding his own, everything rings true.

The light shed by this transient truth makes him feel less empty, the void in his heart filled full with the thought that he is his own person, made of himself and even after everyone leaves him, he'll not be undone, he'll stay intact, the master, the owner of his own pieces.

Even passing, it’s such a relieving thought to have.

The everything of this perfect late evening with his perfect knight makes him daring. His thoughts calm and sprung tight at once. He feels grounded and impulsive at the same time, so he squeezes Hyungwon's hands before letting it go in favor of closing the distance between them by scooting closer to Hyungwon.

Even with his side pressed against him, he feels dissatisfied, so he tugs Hyungwon's arm until it's a perfect pillow for him and puts his head there, the warmth inside him reaching new heights.

It should feel like a betrayal - _it did at the funeral_ \- and yet, right now, it doesn't.

Minhyuk doesn't think about how he used to lie down with Hoseok in the exact same position, bugging him, while he browsed on his phone. The only thoughts that come and go through his mind is the comfort, the silence, the not-anger, the not-guilty feeling that he came chasing when he had asked Hyungwon to take him somewhere that wasn’t his home.

Right now, the skeletons of his past are in hiding, and all that matters is Minhyuk, Hyungwon, the dark blue of the sky, the prickle of the grass, the hitch of Hyungwon's breath that Minhyuk hears when he puts his head on Hyungwon's chest.

The enormity of the past is nil, the daunting length of the future is nil, what is is this moment interspersed between their quick heartbeats.

"That sounds nice. You should start a podcast."

Hyungwon brings his hand over Minhyuk’s head, and gently starts raking his fingers through his hair, laughing. "Yeah? I'll think about it."

They stay like that for a moment until another thought niggles at Minhyuk. The biggest regret that he has is that he never asked Hoseok. It’s time to stop regretting, and start growing.

He turns his gaze towards Hyungwon’s face, watching closely, waiting to catch every twitch that will give him away. "Are you happy, Hyungwon?"

Hyungwon’s hand stills in his hair.

Feeling Minhyuk's sharp gaze, he looks down so that they are meeting each other’s eyes. "I am happy right now," he says simply and then moves his gaze away again as if that should be enough.

But, it's not. This simplicity isn't good enough for him. Hoseok looked happy. He wasn't.

Is anyone?

"What does that mean? You lost your best friend. How can you be happy even sometimes?"

It's not until Hyungwon's mouth twists in anger that Minhyuk realizes what he said.

"Should I stay sad forever? That’s what you want?”

Minhyuk shakes his head quickly because no, that's absolutely not what he wants. He hears the implication now. But, that's not what he wants!

"No. No. No. No," he says, words fast, fearful because he hasn't felt so warm and light in forever and he just messed it up. "I was asking for myself. I–I just don't know how to feel happy anymore."

Hyungwon relaxes beneath him and continues stroking his hair. Minhyuk breathes a little easier.

"Why is that?"

Words are hard, they always skew the intent.

Minhyuk nuzzles closer to Hyungwon looking for the right words until they come to him in the form of someone else’s. Someone who was so much better at saying things that mattered.

"It's like after Hoseok's death my baseline of existence is skewed." Yeah, that’s it. "My state of existence is not neutral. It's...sad. My default is sad now. When I am silent and I am just existing, and not battering my mind against a distraction, I feel solemn, melancholy. I don't know how to express it. I feel sad but in a more permanent way? Is there a word for that? Because ‘sad’ doesn't capture the permanence of it.”

Minhyuk feels Hyungwon slowing down his hand, so he fists his shirt tightly, silently asking him to not let go right now, he needs this anchor.

“Before, when I got sad, it was this temporary feeling, right? Even in the depths of those, I knew that it would pass but now it's the opposite. You said to not look for this big, permanent, innate sense of happiness, but how can I not, when the absence of happiness means sadness, not neutrality, but sadness?” Now that Minhyuk begins, it’s like the mental block that was there, stopping him from acknowledging, much less, articulating has dissolved and the barrage of words that comes...that’s the rawest he has allowed himself to be with someone else.

This is about so much more than Hoseok, this is about Minhyuk.

“Even if I laugh, it feels superficial, like I am faking it. Not for the others, but for myself.

It's like I am made of sadness. I feel like a house full of cracks. And every smile, genuine or fake, feels like paint that I have thrown on it to show it to the new renter. But the cracks? They’re still there and will appear back as soon as it rains. They don't close with time, they widen, in fact. And it rains all the time. It never stops. I go into the kitchen, feeling lazy and I pull out a packet of instant noodles, and sometimes I eat it and it's okay, nothing happens, but sometimes I put the first spoon in my mouth and my mind screams Hoseok's name, and it starts raining. I don't even think of his memories. I don't think of anything and yet everything in my chest, my throat, my head hurts. And it's so constant. It's scent, it's colors, it's taste, it's touch. When will the numbness set in permanently? I want to stop feeling. I want apathy. I am tired, Hyungwon. Even if I feel happy right now, it feels unearned and it makes me feel guilty, so I go back to being sad. It’s like I have almost started to talk myself into sadness. I wake up everyday thinking that this is the day, this is the day when my baseline of existence will restore itself, and I will go back to the past-Minhyuk again but it never comes.

You said it will get better with time, but when? How long do I need to do this? How many days do I survive with the same crushing disappointment, the same mess of emotions, the same void? The good days are too few to keep me going. I hate this Minhyuk. How long do I have to wait for the past-Minhyuk? Everyone is waiting for him, when he will come back. This Minhyuk is tired of sadness but happiness makes him tired too." He is just– "I am just tired of living, Hyungwon. How do I unexist?"

And it's raining again, Minhyuk thinks, as he feels the familiar wetness on his cheeks, and tightness in his throat and chest, so he presses his face into Hyungwon’s chest, taking comfort in the strength with which Hyungwon is holding him.

Hyungwon keeps him there even when Minhyuk tries to move back, to apologize or something because he can feel Hyungwon’s chest moving slowly as if he is breathing deeply to control his own emotions.

Another moment passes as he stays there, cradled by Hyungwon as something precious and fragile. Minhyuk closes his eyes and focuses on Hyungwon’s hand running through his hair, turning his head for a better position, he ends up with his ear pressed against Hyungwon's heart.

"Minhyuk," Hyungwon begins, tone colored with hesitance. "Minhyuk, are you–did you–?" He says and stops like he doesn't know if he is allowed to finish the sentence by saying the forbidden word.

"No, I am not suicidal, Hyungwon. I don't think so.”

“You just asked me how to unexist.”

“I don’t want to die,” Minhyuk affirms. He doesn’t. Not really. “There are moments when everything seems hopeless, when I feel overwhelmed by the feeling that I'll have to do this again for years and years. That’s when I think how easier it will be to just end it, but no, I won't. I don't want to because my friends and family will be crushed. I can't do this to them. I want to give them many things, but the pain that I feel every day is not one of them. No. I won't. I know this is not what people like hearing. ‘I should live for myself.’ I know. They want better answers but this is the best I have."

Hyungwon wraps his other arm around him and holds him so gently and yet with such firmness that letting go feels easy, so Minhyuk lets go of the rigidity in his body and melts against Hyungwon.

"It's okay. You take whatever you get." Minhyuk expects him to say more, something like "You will find more reasons to live." Something hopeful. But Hyungwon doesn't, he just tugs Minhyuk up until his chin is tucked above Minhyuk's head.

Minhyuk hears him repeat "It's okay" again and again until he can't tell if it's for him or Hyungwon himself, he lets it be and focuses on the deep timbre of Hyungwon's voice and his nose pressed against Hyungwon's neck, hands now rubbing his back.

"I am okay, Hyungwon, I promise," Minhyuk says when he catches the shakiness in Hyungwon's voice.

Hyungwon shakes his head but doesn't say anything.

Every ounce of his body craves this comforting silence but–

"Hyungwon?"

“Hmm?”

"Do you think Hoseok wanted to die?"

It's weird how their proximity has rendered Hyungwon's impressive facade useless. Hyungwon’s grip doesn’t loosen, his hands continue rubbing his back and yet Minhyuk can feel his shock in the rhythm of his chest.

"I–Why do you think that?"

"He always joked about it. You know? 'Oh, I wish the world would end and start with me, so that I won't have to take this exam.' Things like that. I always thought of them as harmless jokes, and sometimes I would chide him but I never thought that he was serious. Did he ever tell you that he wanted to die?"

"No," Hyungwon says immediately.

His lies are so transparent. "If you are lying to me Hyungwon and I caught it, I will never forgive you."

"If you’re not going to trust me, then why ask me such questions?"

Minhyuk curls into himself, chastised by the hardness of Hyungwon’s tone. "Sorry.”

Hyungwon sighs. "No. I’m sorry. I didn’t intend that tone.” He drops the softest of kisses on Minhyuk’s head in apology.

The kiss is so tender, so easily missable, but Minhyuk feels it, and he feels it so deeply, that he thinks that the tingling in his lower stomach is something actually physical, as though if someone touched him accidentally, they’d feel that current travel to their own body like an electric shock.

“Honestly, he didn't tell me. You already know that. Hoseok doesn't talk about himself. He drops hints and waits for someone to pick them up, cradle them, and if he finds their gentleness cordial, only then he will open up about it."

Minhyuk pouts because _yes, exactly!_

"You are so right. It's not like if you did it once, then that's it. You'll have to do it again and again, every time. And, it's so hard to decipher what are hints and what is him just being needy."

"I know, right? Jesus. What a loser. And his whales sucked!"

Minhyuk grins and quickly tucks it in Hyungwon’s chest. "He is a loser but his whales are beautiful. You don't know anything about art is all."

Hyungwon clicks his tongue. "You don't know me. You don't know my life. Maybe, secretly, I am Michaelfuckingangelo, what do you know about me?"

"I have seen you draw. I could put paint on my dick and make better art than you."

Hyungwon laughs. "Wow. Isn't that an image."

Minhyuk hits him on the chest and moves his head to squish his nose against the soft flesh under Hyungwon's jaw. "Stop imagining my dick, you perv."

"Dick? I am actually imagining a branch between your legs. Do you know why?"

Minhyuk knows that he is setting himself up by asking, but he gives in anyway. "...Why?"

"Get up. Look at my face." Hyungwon says, tapping his back. Minhyuk pushes himself up until he is looking directly down at Hyungwon's face.

Hyungwon puts his hands on Minhyuk's cheeks. "Because," he says, lips twitching.

It's nice to be held like this even if he knows this is all part of the perfect delivery.

"Because?"

"Because you are so fruity!" Hyungwon says, half-laughing while squishing Minhyuk's cheeks between his hands.

God, Hoseok's friends are absolute idiots just like him, he thinks, before bursting into laughter.

Who says things like this in the same conversation as you telling them that you want to delete your existence? Who else except Hyungwon?

Hyungwon starts his infamous giggling and Minhyuk doesn't know why or what of anything right now except that this is nice. This is warm. This is cozy. He wants it more. Whatever this is. He wants, needs, craves more of it.

Leaning his head down, he puts his forehead against Hyungwon's, voice a light whisper. "I am glad that you are moving back, Hyungwonnie."

Hyungwon bumps his nose against his. "Yeah, me too. Me too."

***

"Tell me a weird thing that you did after Hoseok's death," Hyungwon asks out of nowhere, eyes fixed on the road.

They had spent almost an hour in silence, cuddled together, and as much as Minhyuk wanted to stay there forever in that little circle with his newfound warmth, they had to go back.

So, here they are, driving back to Minhyuk's place after he confessed that he moved. He wants to say, he didn’t take the bus because he's feeling lazy to get out of the car, but the actual reason is sitting beside him asking him a question that no one asked because no one else uses Hoseok's name so casually around him.

Minhyuk thinks of the answer for a moment and goes with the first memory that came to his mind upon hearing the question.

"A week after Hoseok's funeral, I was out shopping groceries. So, I put this big box of protein powder in my cart thinking about how the one at home was finished and Hoseok is going to throw a fit the next time he stays the night. It wasn’t until I was at the counter that I realized that the only person who had that was dead. Instead of putting it back, I bought it. I did it for months, Hyungwon. Months. Until one day my place was less me and more boxes of protein powder, so I decided to distribute it among the staff and banned myself from going near that aisle."

He remembers the first time so vividly. When he came back from there, he could hear the heartbeat in his ears. It was this sudden barrage of feelings after his numbness for days. This realization hitting him in the face that Hoseok was not going to share his food, his bed, his life. From then on began the never-ending cycle of feeling numb and apathetic for days on end, followed by getting hit by another Hoseok thing that scraped his heart raw, and made him cry at everything.

"That's weird and financially a bad decision. You could give them to your customers. Tsk. Hoseok would be disappointed."

"Well, Hoseok can suck my dick."

"You fantasizing about ghost sex now?" He side-eyes Minhyuk and smirks. "Huh. That's right up your lane, actually."

Minhyuk rolls his eyes. "Shut up. What's the weirdest thing you did?"

"I became Catholic for like a week."

Minhyuk turns in his seat, eyes wide in incredulity, because did Hyungwon–edgy atheist Hyungwon–utter the words “became Catholic for like a week”.

“You? You became Catholic?”

"For a week. So, I had just moved and Kihyun wasn't coming there for a month–"

"You literally moved a three-hour drive away. Don't think I bought your 'I am here because I am lazy to go back and forth’ bullshit either."

"Three hours without traffic. Know your facts. Now, I was alone in this far-away land–"

"We used to go there all the time when we were in college. That's where all the fun things are."

Hyungwon sighs, his leg jumping in frustration. "Stop participating! I am trying to tell you a story."

Minhyuk laughs. "Go on."

"So, my neighbor was this nice old lady who asked me if I could go buy a cake for her for some church function, I guess? She was mumbling a lot, so I didn’t get the details. I was bored and she was willing to give me 5 dollars as a tip, so I thought why not? Bought the cake, and then she made me the very tempting offer that if I delivered it to the church, she'd pay me a whole extra 1 dollar! Now, how could I ever refuse that?"

"Wow. You were bored."

Hyungwon nods sagely. "I really was. So, I go and deliver the cake and on my way out, I saw this board about a grief counseling support group meeting there today. I thought, 'Oh, I have grief. A load of fresh and unprocessed ones, why not let God and his people give it a whirl?”

“As you do.”

Hyungwon chuckles. “As you do. I joined the meeting. We sat in a circle and did intros. The pastor starts, 'Let go of your anger. Whoever you are blaming for the death of your loved one, forgive them. And, that's the first step towards healing,’ or some Gandhian bullshit like that.

We go around the circle telling about who we are angry at and I realize that I am feeling every emotion except anger.” Hyungwon’s face hardens suddenly. “Who can I be angry at? Hoseok? He exercised, he didn't smoke or drink, he was kind, he ate healthily, he went out for walks and shit. How do I blame him for developing this tumor?”

Minhyuk puts a hand on Hyungwon’s thigh and squeezes it gently, the little glimpse of pain clenching his own heart.

Hyungwon nods in acknowledgment, something vulnerable in his eyes. “The surgeon and his team? They tried their best. Do you remember the shock on his face? Everyone thought that Hoseok was going to make it out easily. That’s what the general statistics said.

Do I blame the tumor?” Hyungwon grins, and with the next blink, his amused facade is back up again. “Now, if you don’t know, the tumor is an unsentient thing, Minhyuk. It doesn't give a shit about my forgiveness. I won't be the chump who goes around forgiving rocks. Forgiving a tumor isn't punk or healing at all. So, now I had to find someone to be angry at, and then forgive.”

Minhyuk wants to take his hand and ask him to let go, and share his hurt with him, but he is not sure if he has the right to. So, taking a leaf out of Hyungwon’s book, he decides to take shelter in humor as well. “That’s some Ben Shapiro logic right there.”

Hyungwon laughs. “I know! I shit you not, at the time, I was so sure that I was onto something. So, now, who could I be angry at? The answer was all around me. Any guesses? I bet you can’t g–”

“Was it God?”

“Damn it. Yeah, it was God. But, I am an atheist–”

“An edgy atheist.”

Hyungwon’s grin widens. “An edgy atheist. I didn’t have a God to be angry at, so the next _logical_ step was to edgy un-atheist myself, and because I never do anything half-hearted, I borrowed a bible. While the pastor wasn't very keen on my thought process, he was glad to lend me a copy.

I read one page and god, it's so fucking thick and old and outdated and boring. No wonder so many religious people don't read their scriptures and just wing it. So, I ordered a cliffsnotes booklet of the Bible. It arrived a week later but, by then, I had started on this new healing process called "Sobbing uncontrollably.” It’s experimental but very revolutionary. Have you tried it?"

Minhyuk laughs. “Here and there.”

“So, yeah, that was my one week as a very dedicated catholic. I was looking into choirs and everything.”

Minhyuk touches Hyungwon's arm, laughter dissolving into a soft smile. "Why are you like this?"

Hyungwon shrugs. "Things happen when you pee less."

Minhyuk squeezes Hyungwon's bicep roughly, feeling more satisfaction than he should when Hyungwon winces.

***

Hyungwon closes the door and leans against the car, eyes bouncing from one decrepit grey surface to another. "Nice neighborhood you got. It has…" He looks at something behind Minhyuk. "I’m not sure, but I think that person is trying to break the lock of someone else's bicycle?"

Minhyuk looks back and sighs. Sure enough, someone is stealing someone else's bike.

"Yeah. It's normal."

"Well, it has…character," his eyes flit away again, head tilting sideways as he looks at the graffiti on the bottom of the apartment building. "Is that broccoli?"

Minhyuk follows his line of sight. "That drawing on the bottom left?"

"Yeah."

"That's a dick."

Hyungwon makes a face. "I don't think so."

Minhyuk puts his hands on Hyungwon's shoulder and looks into his eyes. "I know so. The person who drew that is the building super. He very proudly told me that the reference picture was his own dick. But, if someone interprets it as something else, that's fine. 'That's part and parcel of being an artist,' he told me if I remember it correctly."

Hyungwon looks at it again and starts giggling, head hanging, his shoulders shaking beneath Minhyuk's hands.

A soft smile lifts Minhyuk's cheeks as he steps closer, wanting to absorb every moment of this.

Still giggling, Hyungwon takes Minhyuk's hands off his shoulder, leaving Minhyuk confused, until he holds them in his own.

This is nice.

"Want to..um–" Minhyuk looks down, suddenly feeling conscious of Hyungwon's gaze, "come up?"

Hyungwon eyes widen ever so slightly, but Minhyuk misses it, taking recluse in looking at their joined hands.

"Next time."

Minhyuk nods. It shouldn't hurt as much as it does. It really shouldn't.

"I want to, but I have something to do. Also, no offense to the lovely people of your neighborhood, but even as I am leaning against the car, there’s a part of me that thinks that when I would turn back, the tires would be missing. I can't leave it here. Next time, I’ll park it somewhere else."

Minhyuk grins up at him. "I thought this place had character."

"Bad character, to be exact."

Minhyuk laughs. Hyungwon draws his hands back, probably ready to leave.

He is standing right there but Minhyuk misses him already.

"Don't look so sad, Bambi."

"Am not," Minhyuk says, feeling his lips pout.

Hyungwon chuckles and draws him in a parting hug. "Listen, Minhyuk."

Minhyuk presses impossibly closer, cheek pressed against Hyungwon’s, turning the distance of a parting gesture into another unspoken invitation.

Is it possible to make candles out of this scent? This feeling. This moment. Something that he can light up by his bedside and always feel warm and tingly?

"Yeah, Hyungwon?"

"I am going to do so many things and I need you to live so that I can gloat about it to you."

Minhyuk shakes his head. "You are impossible."

"I'm possible. You just haven't tried doing me."

"Stop talking."

And, Hyungwon does.

For a whole ten seconds.

"Listen."

Minhyuk sighs. "What?"

"Stop feeling guilty about being happy."

Minhyuk nods. "I am trying."

Hyungwon pats his back. “You are doing amazing, sweetie. Except for your hair. Birds called, they want their nest back.”

Minhyuk punches his stomach lightly. “Yeah, well. Cherry blossoms called, they want their flowers back.”

“Ouch. I am so hurt. Being called beautiful hurts.”

Minhyuk draws back, eyes narrowed. “Go away.”

Hyungwon laughs and takes his hands in his own. “I don’t want to leave but I’ll try.” His gaze moves to Minhyuk’s eyes, then nose and then his lips. "In a minute.”

Minhyuk swallows, looking down, feeling hot in the face for some reason.

Hyungwon leans down, face hovering in front of his. “Listen.”

“Hmm?”

The warmth is flooding his face, his ears, his heart. Minhyuk doesn’t look up. He can’t.

Still leaning, Hyungwon tilts his head sideways and smiles. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah,” Minhyuk says, surprised to hear the breathlessness of his tone.

Hyungwon pecks his cheek softly, the quick touch burning Minhyuk, who feels his breath hitch.

“Good night.”

***

At home, fresh out of the shower, Minhyuk puts soup in the microwave, rubbing his hair dry with a towel and it’s then that he realizes that he forgot the folder somewhere.

He opens his phone to call Hyungwon, almost panicked, when he sees Hyungwon’s text.

**Idiot. You forgot the folder in my car.**

Sighing in relief, he texts back.

**Oh, thank god. I thought that I lost it.**

Minhyuk is washing the dishes when his phone pings with a reply. Instead of waiting, he wipes his hand on his shirt and turns on the phone.

**Lmao. That would have been hilarious. Imagine there being an after-life and you going up to Hoseok and saying: “Welp, sowwy, I lost it.”.**

Minhyuk rolls his eyes and continues washing the dishes, lips parting into a wide smile.

Tucked in the bed, lights closed, he replies.

**Hilarious? I was going to have a heart attack.**

He opens Hoseok’s email, bracing himself to read it again, and reply. He reads the first line and realizes that he doesn’t want to, not right now.

He’ll throw himself into his life tomorrow, but tonight…

Minhyuk closes the email and sends Hyungwon another message.

**When can I have my folder back?**

**Come to my (Jooheon’s) place this weekend, let’s watch a movie on my sexy projector, and you can have your not-sexy folder back.**

**You took it. You come here!**

**I took it? I TOOK IT? You forgot it! I don’t blame you though. People get so enchanted by me. I have made many a Cinderellas “forget” their shoe.**

**Cinderella didn’t forget her shoe, she dropped it.**

**It was intentional actually. She was being sly. I read the book.**

**Shoo. You come here on the weekend.**

**So bossy. Fine. I’ll bring my projector with me.**

**You are so pretentious about your projector. It’s sickening.**

**Yeah? Culture makes you sick? You HATE culture? That's what you sayin, BRO?**

**Hush. Your face in my place. With or without the projector. On Sunday.**

**Anything else, m’lord?**

**I’ll let you know :)**

**Oof. Ominous.**

**:)**

**Good night.**

**Have a good night, love.**

Minhyuk reads the last message again, and closes his eyes, smiling to himself.

_***_

A light wind lifts Minhyuk's hair as he tilts his head back, and takes a big sip from his beer. He closes his eyes and sighs, long and disappointed.

"You are not planning to die, are you?"

Minhyuk opens his eyes and stares at Hyungwon.

A little away, people are dancing, some are sitting in a circle with a bottle spinning between them, a couple is lying down on the mat, their eyes on the dark clouds and palms together in a loose embrace.

Minhyuk stares at the flower tucked behind Hyungwon's ear. "No?"

Hyungwon juts out his lips sadly. "Ugh. So, I will have to see your annoying mug forever then?"

Minhyuk hits his shoulder. "You are graduating, you won't have to see my anything ever again."

Turning his face away, he pouts.

Hyungwon shuffles to stand in front of him. "You’re sitting on the railing. If you fall down, you will most probably die. Aren't you afraid?"

Minhyuk shrugs. "It's just death. Who cares."

Hyungwon grins. "Very punk rock of you." He taps Minhyuk's knees. "Now, get off."

Minhyuk puts his arms around Hyungwon's shoulder, mischievous eyes reflecting the lights around them. "Are you scared for me?"

"If you fall down and die," Hyungwon wraps his arm around Minhyuk's waist and gently pulls him down to the ground, "then we'll get in trouble.” He takes a step back, drawing his arms back. “I can't afford a good lawyer. I am 18 and poor."

"You'll miss me."

Hyungwon leans closer and stares at Minhyuk.

Minhyuk laughs awkwardly. "Is there something on my face?"

Hyungwon nods and touches Minhyuk's cheek with a finger. "An eyelash." He puts it in front of Minhyuk's lips. "Make a wish."

Minhyuk closes his eyes and blows lightly.

"What did you wish for?"

Minhyuk opens his eyes and looks behind Hyungwon. "Can’t you guess?"

Hyungwon nods, no discernible expression on his face. "Yeah, I think I can."

Suddenly feeling tired, Minhyuk puts his head on Hyungwon's shoulder, eyes stuck on Hoseok behind him, sitting in the circle laughing.

"Sometimes it's on us to get what we want." Hyungwon pats Minhyuk’s back. “Eyelashes can only do this much. They don't have any arms, after all."

“Wisdom of the day, is it?”

"Yeah. Here’s another wise thing, so listen carefully."

“I’m listening.”

“I’ll miss you if you die.”

Minhyuk turns his head to fit it better in the crook of Hyungwon’s neck. "Yeah?"

Hyungwon removes the flower from behind his ear and tucks it behind Minhyuk’s. “Yeah.”

Minhyuk touches it. "For me?"

Hyungwon takes a step back, taking Minhyuk’s bony pillow with him. He half-turns to look at something behind him, before facing Minhyuk and shaking his head. "No." A half step forward. He pecks Minhyuk's cheek, quick and soft. "Go get your guy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 31k words later: 
> 
> and that's all for now.
> 
> I really hope you liked reading this and found some bits that touched you or you enjoyed. Leave a kudos, share if you are inclined, but comments are especially welcomed and encouraged. I know it's hard commenting and finding the right words, so you can just comment a bit/scene/sentence that you liked without any explanations whatsoever! 
> 
> I would like to use this space to thank my lovely editor/friend/a-new-owner-of-a-killer-laptop, Sage, for their precious time, for editing this, and for leaving me such warm and supportive feedback always.
> 
> I am always on the verge of abandoning this fic because writing it emotionally drains me, but I also feel like there are so many things that I want to say that I can only say in this fic, so I am hoping that in a few months, I'll be rejuvenated and come back to this fic again. I'll see you then? 
> 
> Till then, please feel free to check out my other fics and if you are like: fuck comments, I want to dm this hot piece of hunk, or I want to be sly and mysterious, so I'll cc, here you go: 
> 
> Twitter:  
> [@crankyminwon](https://twitter.com/crankyminwon)  
> CC: [wonhofeelslikewhatcottoncandytasteslike](https://curiouscat.me/MellowMinhyuk)
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH for reading, have a good day~

**Author's Note:**

> Sup.
> 
> I pondered not posting this because such stuff could be triggering for people even though this chapter is pretty low-key, so please take care of yourselves if such stuff really affects you and if you are down in the dumps, don't hesitate to reach out to me. 
> 
> Do I even have to say that I love it when people interact with me about my fics? Do I? Okay, I'll say it. I love it when people interact with me regarding my fics, so leave a comment, reach out to me on [Twittah!](https://twitter.com/mellow_minhyuk) or [Curious Cat(tah)!](https://curiouscat.me/MellowMinhyuk%22)


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